No more ordering CDROMs or DVDs and waiting days. Download the .iso image over the web and install from there. Use the virtual DVD drive on your VIOS 2.1 and install directly into the LPAR or read the contents into your NIM Server.

Mount the .ISO image:

• On AIX 6.1 or AIX 7, use the loopmount command: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.cmds/doc/aixcmds3/loopmount.htm
• On AIX 5.3, use the mklv-dd-mount trick: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/WikiPtype/AIXV53MntISO

In case you're wondering "How do I load a kickstart configuration file on my USB thumbdrive, while installing Linux?", we can tell you, it is really simple. You only have to know the syntax to do this.

First, make sure that both the Linux DVD and the USB thumdrive are connected to the system, either directly, or through virtual media. Then, to install linux, type:

# linux ks=hd:sdc:/ks.cfg

• https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/sysadmin-guide/s1-kickstart2-startinginstall.html
• http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Installation_Guide-en-US/s1-kickstart2-startinginstall.html
• http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Installation_Guide-en-US/ch-kickstart2.html

The most popular innovation of IBM AIX Version 6.1 is clearly workload partitioning (WPARs). Once you get past the marketing hype, you'll need to determine the value that WPARs can provide in your environment. What can WPARs do that Logical Partitions (LPARs) could not? How and when should you use WPARs? Equally as important, when should you not use Workload Partitioning. Finally, how do you create, configure, and administer workload partitions?

For a very good introduction to WPARs, please refer to the following article: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-wpar61aix/ or download the PDF version here.

This article describes the differences between system and application WPARs, the various commands available, such as mkwpar, lswpar, startwpar and clogin. It also describes how to create and manage file systems and users, and it discusses the WPAR manager. It ends with an excellent list of references for further reading.

You can run invscout to do a microcode discovery on your system, that will generate a hostname.mup file. Then you go upload this hostname.mup file at this page on the IBM website and you get a nice overview of the status of all firmware on your system.

So far, so good. What if you have plenty of systems and you want to automate this? Here's a script to do this. This script first does a webget to collect the latest catalog.mic file from the IBM website. Then it distributes this catalog file to all the hosts you want to check. Then, it runs invscout on all these hosts, and collects the hostname.mup files. It will concatenate all these files into 1 large file and do an HTTP POST through curl to upload the file to the IBM website and have a report generated from it.

So, what do you need?

• You should have an AIX jump server that allows you to access the other hosts as user root through SSH. So you should have setup your SSH keys for user root.
• This jump server must have access to the Internet.
• You need to have wget and curl installed. Get it from the Linux Toolbox.
• Your servers should be AIX 5 or higher. It doesn't really work with AIX 4.
• Optional: a web server, like Apache 2, would be nice, so you can drop the resulting HTML file on your website every day.
• An entry in the root crontab to run this script every day.
• A list of servers you want to check.

#!/bin/ksh

# script:  generate_survey.ksh
# purpose: To generate a microcode survey html file

# where is my list of servers located?
SERVERS=/usr/local/etc/servers

# what temporary folder will I use?
TEMP=/tmp/mup

# what is the invscout folder
INV=/var/adm/invscout

# what is the catalog.mic file location for invscout?
MIC=${INV}/microcode/catalog.mic

# if you have a webserver,
# where shall I put a copy of survey.html?
APA=/usr/local/apache2/htdocs

# who's the sender of the email?
FROM=microcode_survey@ibm.com

# who's the receiver of the email?
TO="your.email@address.com"

# what's the title of the email?
SUBJ="Microcode Survey"

# user check
USER=`whoami`
if [ "$USER" != "root" ];
then
    echo "Only root can run this script."
    exit 1;
fi

# create a temporary directory
rm -rf $TEMP 2>/dev/null
mkdir $TEMP 2>/dev/null
cd $TEMP

# get the latest catalog.mic file from IBM
# you need to have wget installed 
# and accessible in $PATH
# you can download this on:
# www-03.ibm.com
# /systems/power/software/aix/linux/toolbox/download.html
wget techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/mdownload/catalog.mic
# You could also use curl here, e.g.:
#curl techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/mdownload/catalog.mic -LO

# move the catalog.mic file to this servers invscout directory
mv $TEMP/catalog.mic $MIC

# remove any old mup files
echo Remove any old mup files from hosts.
for server in `cat $SERVERS` ; do
   echo "${server}"
   ssh $server "rm -f $INV/*.mup"
done

# distribute this file to all other hosts
for server in `cat $SERVERS` ; do
   echo "${server}"
   scp -p $MIC $server:$MIC
done

# run invscout on all these hosts
# this will create a hostname.mup file
for server in `cat $SERVERS` ; do
   echo "${server}"
   ssh $server invscout
done

# collect the hostname.mup files
for server in `cat $SERVERS` ; do
   echo "${server}"
   scp -p $server:$INV/*.mup $TEMP
done

# concatenate all hostname.mup files to one file
cat ${TEMP}/*mup > ${TEMP}/muppet.$$

# delete all the hostname.mup files
rm $TEMP/*mup

# upload the remaining file to IBM.
# you need to have curl installed for this
# you can download this on:
# www-03.ibm.com
# /systems/power/software/aix/linux/toolbox/download.html
# you can install it like this:
# rpm -ihv 
#    curl-7.9.3-2.aix4.3.ppc.rpm curl-devel-7.9.3-2.aix4.3.ppc.rpm
# more info on using curl can be found on: 
# http://curl.haxx.se/docs/httpscripting.html
# more info on uploading survey files can be found on:
# www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/mds/fetch?pop=progUpload.html

# Sometimes, the IBM website will respond with an
# "Expectation Failed" error message. Loop the curl command until
# we get valid output.

stop="false"

while [ $stop = "false" ] ; do

curl -H Expect: -F mdsData=@${TEMP}/muppet.$$ -F sendfile="Upload file" \ 
   http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/mds/mds \
   > ${TEMP}/survey.html

#
# Test if we see Expectation Failed in the output
#

unset mytest
mytest=`grep "Expectation Failed" ${TEMP}/survey.html`

if [ -z "${mytest}" ] ; then
        stop="true"
fi

sleep 10

done

# now it is very useful to have an apache2 webserver running
# so you can access the survey file
mv $TEMP/survey.html $APA

# tip: put in the crontab daily like this:
# 45 9 * * * /usr/local/sbin/generate_survey.ksh 1>/dev/null 2>&1

# mail the output
# need to make sure this is sent in html format
cat - ${APA}/survey.html <<HERE | sendmail -oi -t
From: ${FROM}
To: ${TO}
Subject: ${SUBJ}
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/html
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit

HERE

# clean up the mess
cd /tmp
rm -rf $TEMP

If you have issues getting to the computer room easily, and you have to update an HMC on the raised floor, then you can also do that upgrade remotely. IBM describes two methods on their website: by using the update media and using the recoverable media. Using the update media method, you may end up with a corrupted HMC. The only way to solve this, us accessing the HMC in the computer room (*sigh*).

Therefore, use the recoverable media option. That one works better. A link to the documentation and software can be found here.

If your AIX server level is below 5.3 TL06, the easiest way is just to upgrade your current OS to TL 06 at minimum (take note it will depend of configurations for Power6 processors) then clone your server and install it on the new p6.

But if you want to avoid an outage on your account, you can do the next using a NIM server (this is not official procedure for IBM, so they do not support this):

• Create your mksysb resource and do not create a spot from mksysb.
• Create an lppsource and spot with minimum TL required (I used TL08).
• Once you do nim_bosinst, choose the mksysb, and the created spot. It will send a warning message about spot is not at same level as mksysb, just ignore it.
• Do all necessary to boot from NIM.
• Once restoring the mksysb, there's some point where it is not able to create the bootlist because it detects the OS level is not supported on p6. So It will ask to continue and fix it later via SMS or fix it right now.
• Choose to fix it right now (it will open a shell). You will notice oslevel is as the same as mksysb.
• Create a NFS from NIM server or another server where you have the necessary TL and mount it on the p6.
• Proceed to do an upgrade, change the bootlist, exit the shell. Server will boot with new TL over the p6.

It is very easy to clone your rootvg to another disk, for example for testing purposes. For example: If you wish to install a piece of software, without modifying the current rootvg, you can clone a rootvg disk to a new disk; start your system from that disk and do the installation there. If it succeeds, you can keep using this new rootvg disk; If it doesn't, you can revert back to the old rootvg disk, like nothing ever happened.

First, make sure every logical volume in the rootvg has a name that consists of 11 characters or less (if not, the alt_disk_copy command will fail).

To create a copy on hdisk1, type:

alt_disk_copy -d hdisk1

# alt_rootvg_op -X old_rootvg

# alt_disk_copy -d "hdisk4 hdisk5"

A very easy way to see what was installed recently on your system:

# lslpp -h

This is a short procedure how to creat an AIX DVD from a base set of 8 AIX 5.3 CD's:

1. Copy all CD's using "cp -hRp" to a directory, start with the last CD and work towards the first one. You can do this on either an AIX or a Linux system.
2. Check that <directory>/installp/ppc contails all install images.
3. If not already, remove <directory>/usr/sys/inst.images. This directory also might contain all installation images.
4. Create a link <directory>/usr/sys/inst.images pointing to <directory>/installp/ppc.
5. Find all .toc files in the directory structure and, if necessary, change all vol%# entries to vol%1 (There should be at least 2 .toc files that need these updates). You have to change vol%2 to vol%1, vol%3 to vol%1, etcetera, up till vol%8.
6. Create an ISO image with RockRidge extentions:

   # mkisofs -R -o  
   

# lsdev -Cc cdrom
cd0 Available 3F-09-00-0,0 SCSI DVD-RAM Drive
cd1 Available 3F-09-00-5,0 16 Bit LVD SCSI DVD-ROM Drive

# lscfg -vl cd0
cd0  U1.9-P2-I1/Z2-A0  SCSI DVD-RAM Drive (4700 MB)
        Manufacturer................IBM
        Machine Type and Model......DVRM00203
        ROS Level and ID............A132
        Device Specific.(Z0)........058002028F000010
        Part Number.................04N5272
        EC Level....................F74471
        FRU Number..................04N5967

# rpm -ihv --ignoreos <filename>

# rpm -ihv --ignoreos /tmp/ibm-scsi-dvdram.dvrm00203-A151.rpm
ibm-scsi-dvdram.dvrm00203  #############################

# diag -d cd0 -c -T "download -s /etc/microcode -f"

# diag -d cd0 -c -T "download -s /etc/microcode -f"
Installation of the microcode has completed successfully.
The current microcode for cd0 is IBM-DVRM00203.A151.
Please run diagnostics on the device to ensure that it is
functioning properly.

# /usr/sbin/burn_cd -d /dev/cd0 /install/aix53ml4dvd.iso

Ever noticed the different colors on parts of Power5 systems? Some parts are orange, others are blue. Orange means: you can touch it, open it, remove it, even if the system is running. Blue means: don't touch it if the system is active.