ROOTVG

Hello everybody.

Before asking some questions I would like to introduce myself a bit more to rootvg. First of all I´m no native speaker, so please excuse any humble or misunderstandable expression. I will try to do my very best!
I´m a freelance journalist and besides my profession a collector of unusual or rare computing hardware. My background on operating systems is based somewhere in the early days of the Spectrum ZX, later the Ataris and some Amigas but in deep I´m clearly located in the old Mac OS. Mac OS X in special and UNIX in general is still somewhat "uncomfortable" to me when Terminal-related actions are asked or in other words: I´m no UNIX freak. But as a collector I´m now facing UNIX in a very "uncomfortable" way: AIX 4.1.4. I know that this distribution is very old but as long as there is nearly no information available anymore about AIX for older computers I´m contacting any source in order to find some help - that´s why I´m here, now ;-)

Some days ago I was very lucky in getting myself an old Apple Network Server 500/132 (not to be mixed up with "Apple Workgroup Server" or "A/UX Macs"). This old box formerly was managed by two AIX versions: AIX 4.1.4 and later on a 4.1.5 update / upgrade. Other Versions besides the already mentioned ones could NOT be used on that machine, just Yellow Dog Linux 3 and 4 can be used with that strange server. As long as I would like to use that server with the original AIX OS lots of questions are rising...

I already managed to install 4.1.4 on that box facing lots of incompatibilites with original Apple hardware or compatible hardware that is usable in regular Macs. Ok, this is not a catastrophy. What really annoys me is the handling of AIX. It took me nearly 30 minutes to get my display resolution and refresh changed. Now You might have an impression how things look like ;-) While messing around with AIX a bit more I stumbled over the network settings...

Is there any documentation out there available describing the configuration of network settings within AIX in an understandable way? Doesn´t matter if written in English or German.

I´m looking for the Update / Upgrade 4.1.5 Apple once provided for download. I don´t know if the IBM update and the Apple update are the same (in fact the Apple AIX just contained some Apple-specific drivers and some utilities for a Mac OS based computer), so I don´t know if I could use an IBM update - if only one would be available. Can anybody in here help me with these files? The Apple update is preferred...

I´m wondering if there is any possibility to get PHP, MySQL and PHPMyAdmin installed on AIX 4.1.4, furthermore I´m unsure what Apache version can be used with that AIX version.

As You can see I´m pretty lost with that old OS... So any help or information is highly appreciated! Thanks in advance and kind regards from Switzerland

J

J,

Well I bet I hold the record for most judicious museum archiving of AIX  ;)
I still have working 3.2.5, 4.3.3 and 5.1 systems, all of which will run a very old version of NCSA web server I think it is called
- doesn't do name-based hosting, can't remember if it did SSL (I think not) and is very simple.  Don't know if other
versions of Apache proper would work with 4.1.4/5 (which I don't think I ever used for very long - bit of a bug-fest as I recall), but Michael has some experience of compiling Apache on various AIX levels and it might work - those old libraries are going to be a problem I suspect.

For network settings, "smit mktcpip", you shouldn't need to mess with "no" settings or other layers of it to get it working.

However, instead of bothering with all the rotten Apples,  ::)
I recommend you go on eBay or contact a local second hand pSeries seller
and get a proper IBM AIX machine, e.g. a 43P-150 or p505:
- the former is very cheap now, will take you up to 5.3 and is much nicer to work with, rather PC-like,
- the later is ideal to play with LPARs and much dearer but my favourite design of machine (intended for a rack, 1U).
Then you can have a really nice Apache server on it, just like this one.

If any of our other readers would like to plan ahead for Christmas,
ROOTVG would very much like a p505 to play with if
anyone out there happens to be giving one away.  :)

A year earlier and I would have still had the CD's for you - at least to copy from. But I cleaned out my basement.

As far as setting up network, display, etc.. there are some new features, but the basic steps have not change from AIX 3.2.5 for tcpip. Although in those days there was more 'need' for a bsd way of doing things - which is still in AIX 6.1 I believe (the switch to bsd way).

basically, use 'smitty mktcpip' and fill in the dialog.

for your display, 'smitty devices' and look for the correct family of devices (display adapters).

I'll look into getting AIX 4.3.3 documentation - I think I still have that here somewhere - but you could just refer to the AIX 5.1 documentation for the more basic info. I have a link on the home page. What also might interest you is following the hardware infocenter link.

When looking for end-of-life updates, and other 'hard to find' updates, never complete pacjages, refer to ftp://ftp.boulder.ibm.com/software/server/ (http://ftp://ftp.boulder.ibm.com/software/server/)

Something that might be useful to you is a recent addition - maybe nothing: ftp://ftp.boulder.ibm.com/software/server/duplicatemac/ (http://ftp://ftp.boulder.ibm.com/software/server/duplicatemac/)

Well, I got a bit further in my quest...

For some odd reason Apple still mentions within an online cocument, that the 4.1.5 Upgrade (which turns out to be a full install) is available from IBM - IBM in return states the 4.1.5 AIX as "not available and unsupported". So in other words: if I can´t find a copy of 4.1.5 I will have to get along with 4.1.4 - which is quite annoying as this AIX doesn´t support some hardware I really need. In addition the old Mac OS utilities are not available anymore, too, so configuration of volumes will take place within AIX only. Those utilities were installed on regular Macs in order to obtain a terminal connection and a disk management utility.

What really annoys me is that hardware compatibility thing. I got myself several PCI Ethernet cards which sometimes refuse to work. When installing a fresh BOS the server recognizes some but only when installed in the upper three PCI slots. Installing these cards after installing the BOS does not work. The strangest thing: the IBM Ethernet card from 1995 does not work in any way...

Now, as I´m still pretty confused with that AIX my major interest is how to determine the MAC adress of a network adapter. Is there a terminal command / smitty input that could deliver such information?

Thanks in advance once again.

J

The easy part: seeing the MAC address:

michael@x054:[/home/michael]netstat -i
Name  Mtu   Network     Address            Ipkts Ierrs    Opkts Oerrs  Coll
en0   1500  link#2      0.9.6b.3e.46.ff    9994565     0  5552487     0     0
en0   1500  192.168.129 x054               9994565     0  5552487     0     0
lo0   16896 link#1                           25026     0    25395     0     0
lo0   16896 127         loopback             25026     0    25395     0     0
lo0   16896 ::1                              25026     0    25395     0     0


My MAC address is: 0x00096b3e46ff (link # line).

Regarding hardware issues: IBM was always very specific about hardware specificatins. Cards not built to "standards" generally failed in an IBM box - even PC's. In the early days of PCI, and especially the ISA interfaces lots of settings had to be set or modified while in the BIOS setup programs. This could explain why cards can be seen/installed at original install, but not afterwards.

However, if you know the real hardware values, you can modify them, and then re-run cfgmgr and/or reboot to activate a card.

On this box: running AIX 4.3.3 I list the addapters: then I examine the two cards. The type is actually seen as the same by AIX, but from the location codes I know one is on the motherboard (integrated) the other is a card (in a PCI slot).

$ su
root's Password:
# lsdev -Cc adapter
sa0    Available 01-C0 Standard I/O Serial Port 1
sa1    Available 01-D0 Standard I/O Serial Port 2
sioka0 Available 01-F0 Keyboard Adapter
sioma0 Available 01-G0 Mouse Adapter
fda0   Available 01-H0 Standard I/O Diskette Adapter
pmc0   Available 01-I0 Power Management Controller
scsi0  Available 04-C0 Wide SCSI I/O Controller
siota0 Available 01-A0 Tablet Adapter
ppa0   Available 01-B0 Standard I/O Parallel Port Adapter
paud0  Available 01-E0 Ultimedia Integrated Audio
ent0   Available 04-B0 IBM PCI Ethernet Adapter (22100020)
ent1   Available 04-02 IBM PCI Ethernet Adapter (22100020)


# lsattr -EHl ent0
attribute     value          description                       user_settable

busio         0x1000100      Bus I/O address                   False
busintr       6              Bus interrupt level               False
intr_priority 3              Interrupt priority                False
tx_que_size   64             TRANSMIT queue size               True
rx_que_size   32             RECEIVE queue size                True
full_duplex   no             Full duplex                       True
use_alt_addr  no             Enable ALTERNATE ETHERNET address True
alt_addr      0x000000000000 ALTERNATE ETHERNET address        True
# lsattr -EHl ent1
attribute     value          description                       user_settable

busio         0x1000120      Bus I/O address                   False
busintr       2              Bus interrupt level               False
intr_priority 3              Interrupt priority                False
tx_que_size   64             TRANSMIT queue size               True
rx_que_size   32             RECEIVE queue size                True
full_duplex   no             Full duplex                       True
use_alt_addr  no             Enable ALTERNATE ETHERNET address True
alt_addr      0x000000000000 ALTERNATE ETHERNET address        True
#



The important values are the ones with the user_settable attribute False. This means that AIX cannot change the value - it is determined by the hardware. For Most PCI/ISA adapters these are bus_io address, interrupt number (busintr) and interrupt priority (intr_priority).

On you system, compare the values that you can read while in the BIOS, or hardware setup programs, and the settings listed. By the way, your card drivers might say True for user_settable, but actually, this means that you can change the setting for the driver, not really change the card settings from AIX.

Probably, this will be a requirement to have any success as when I try to change one of these settings, I get, as is to be expected, an error message.

# chdev -l ent1 -a busintr=3 -P
Method error (/usr/lib/methods/chgent):
        0514-018 The values specified for the following attributes
                 are not valid:
     busintr     Bus interrupt level



As you can see, the command to change a setting is in the form:

# chdev -l device_name -a attr_name=new_value

For example, chdev -l ent0 -a rx_que_size=64 [-P]

The -P argument is to make a change in the settings database (ODM) but not change an active device. It will take effect after the device either goes to Defined state (rmdev -l dev_name) and then gets activated again (cfgmgr, or mkdev -l device_name), or after a reboot if the device cannot be offlined.

Thanks a lot Michael for providing such valuable information. I hope You don't mind my requests, AIX is very new to me and has nothing in common with the operating systems I knew until now.

In the meantime I got a step further. I already found out that a "regular" IBM AIX 4.1.5 Install will not work on my box, it has to be that update from Apple that is lost by now - no need to mention that IBM's support in this case was much better than Apple's constant refuse to give any reply at all. So I am damned to stick to 4.1.4. This reduces my options a bit more: no 100 mbps as far as I can see. The odd thing about this: the Apple 10/100 TX card is "defined"  but not "availble".

I've been experimenting a bit more with that box. I already managed to copy all installation files of the CD to the much faster hard disk and making a DDS-2 and a DLT tape backup from all this - just in case my experiments should end up within a desaster. In addition I added two more disks to the rootvg, expanding the file system. We, might be small steps in Your eyes but to me it's some sort of "first contact".

Still in need of further support and information I hope I'm not annoying the audience too much...

J

Defined means IBM recognizes it as a card, but cannot make it available - i.e. talk with it.

please provide the output of the command:

# lsattr -El ent0 (assuming your card is ent0 that is defined - otherwise change the 0 for the correct #).

And, just in case you thought so - rootvg.net is not IBM. John Peck owns the domain, and I help out as a hobby. google ads and donations keep rootvg.net in the air.

Michael

"In the air" - is that like something by Howard Hughes :D

Re the audience - personally I'd like more questions like this,
or anything involving shell scripting as the answer,
with less of the VIOS and stuff I cannot abide :-\

First of all thanks again!

I knew this domain isn´t bound to IBM - most of valuable information is found outside the major companies, anyway ;-)
@ John: what does VIOS stand for? I´m a classic Mac user, not into deep into commands and stuff alike... I noticed from time to time that asking questions as a complete newbie can annoy an audience pretty fast. I already ordered an AIX 4 book but I didn´t recieve it until now so many questions will be placed here.

But now to the comman line output - the card is ent1 (sorry, no code copy paste, just written by hand):

device_addr: 0xffffffff - Device Address: False
intr_level: 13 - Bus interrupt level: False
intr_priority: 3 - Interrupt priority: False
xmt_que_size: 128 - TRANSMIT queue size: True
rcv_pool_size: 40 - RECIEVE buffer pool size: True
use_alt_addr: no - Enable ALTERNATE ETHERNET address: True
alt_addr: 0x - ALTERNATE ETHERNET address: True
OF_handle: 0x9f52250 - OpenFirmware node handle: False
cfg_addr: 0x - Configuration Space Address: True
full_dpx: auto - Enable Full Duplex Operation: True
xmt_thrs: 0 - Transmit FIFO Threshold: True
capt_fx: no - Enable Capture Effect Avoidance: True

I double-checked my writing...

J

VIOS is where you have a partitioned machine, with multiple operating systems
doing their I/O through one of the partitions that has real resources allocated to it.
This leads to immense over complication, poor performance, but a chance to keep
lots of people in work ::)

Ok. quick reply. The address 0xffffffff is probably just a placeholder.

Can you start the machine in BIOS mode and find out what the BIOS says the card is setup as. I assume the card is not hot-pluggable and/or the AIX version you have does not know how to modify the addresses. So I need to know it's addresses, interupt etc..

Once I have those values I can pass a number of commands to manually modify the ODM so the driver gets loaded with the correct (I hope) values.

And I like VIOS - Virtual IO Server - because it keeps me in work. This week I am teaching the course AU78: VIOS Best Practices (as an alternative title - I rarely remember the official one).

And newbs sometimes have the best questions - welcome to rootvg.net!

Newbies sometimes ask the best questions - absolutly true! Regarding topics I have some knowledge of I can only testify this statement ;-)

So for now I got a bit further... sort of. I managed to acquire the pure Apple 4.1.5 install CD  :) But it doesn´t solve my problem in some ways. At last I now have german translations in some areas of AIX. Ok, but now to topics:

As far as I know no Apple machine has a "BIOS" but an "Open Firmware" which can be accessed right after booting the machine, so any information stored there surely will look a bit different from what I know of BIOS screens, but I can try if You want to.
Anyway the 100 MBps TX card from Apple still stays "defined" but now I know the type of device the BOS couldn´t "put" into the kernel. When installing the BOS the installer moans about a

device.pci.23100020
devices.pci.pci.1023+2000

As long as I don´t want to outsource Your knowledge too much and fast I thought to myself: "You´ve seen such lines somewhere before" - so I began to roll bookmarks and stumbled over this IBM site:

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/devices/

I scrolled to a line which at least looked a bit like the two lines above but there are many entries that look the same. I decided to download

devices.pci.23100020.diag.4.1.5.1.bff

At least the first three parts look exactly the same, but the "diag", the "4.1.5.1" and the "bff" are different. So I made some brainstorming:

bff = file type extension (?)
4.1.5.1 = version of AIX this driver is supposed to be used within (?)
diag = ????

As far as I understand AIX by now "diag" means some sort of diagnostic routine, so I don´t think this file is actually a driver but something AIX calls "selective fix package". Is it true? The according info file states the same (selective fix package for an IBM PCI 10/100 Mb Et card).
What really annoys me is the fact that a fresh installation of that newly acquired AIX seems (I don´t know exactly) to install a 4.1.5 but not a 4.1.5.1 - so I don´t know if I can use this driver if it is actually a driver that might work.

One supposed to be more simple problem resulting of all this: how do I transfer such a driver? As far as I understood the system by now it should be enough to fill an ISO 9660 CD with all the stuff and drivers needed, throw it into the CD ROM drive and specify that one as source. True?

Another aspect are harddisks. I´ve been exchanging several disks (right now I only can connect one at a time) and installed to see if the server accepts different HD sizes. After shutting down the server via several commands like

shutdown -F
shutdown -h

etc. AIX seems to have some troubles with some drives that worked before. As I don´t know how to format (low-level) a disk I tend to hang them to a Mac and reformat them there (one drive couldn´t get even recognized anymore... 146 GB for the dustbin :( ). Is there a command that can be used in the early boot state to low level format a drive which is stated "unknown to the BOS database"?

Dear, oh dear...

J

In the meantime I already forgot how I copied all files off the CD to the hard disk - to use that hard disk as source for drivers :(

J

I found the way how to copy the files :)

But another update: the BOS identifies the Apple Ethernet Card. It states the 10 MBps functionality as "available" but the 100 MBps functionality only as "defined" - so I suppose it´s just a question of how AIX tries to talk to the right interfaces?

J

did not know what Apple would call it, but need the values, if possible, that the system says it has. However, we may be able to solve this differently as well.

Try the Apple CD first:
# cfgmgr -i /dev/cd0

This command does a plug and play discovery of devices, and when it finds a device that does not have a driver on system, it checks the installation media (-i) for a driver.
If you get your error message again, try the AIX 4.1.5 disk as well.

To see what is on an IBM media disk use the following command:

# installp -d /dev/cd0 -L

and maybe grep for your device number.

device.pci.23100020
devices.pci.pci.1023+2000


You came very close:

bff = file type extension (?) -- Backup File Format (as in backup/restore command rather than tar or cpio)
4.1.5.1 = version of AIX this driver is supposed to be used within (?): AIX 4.1.5, patch #1
diag = diagnostics.

More IBM speak now: IBM files sets are delivered as LPP: Licensed Program Packages. LPP are packaged as filesets, and filesets can be bundled. We wont deal with bundles here - just name dropping.

The LPP for this device is: devices.pci.23100020

The filesets are: diag, com, and rte (without looking these are the most common filesets for devices) and then there is the version number as well.

When you use the installp command above to list LPP filesets on media, or in a directory, there are two types: type I and type U (Installable, and Update). Updates only work in combination with an already installed fileset. Installable are installable when it has not been installed before, or it is a higher level the the current version installed. So updates are small by comparison. You can also force an installation (to go backwards, or to reinstall because you doubt the integrity of the installed version).

Yes, a fix for some diagnostics routines, not the driver (in the .com - common, and .rte - run time environment) filesets.


If the driver exists on the media, the cfgmgr command above will install it for you just as if it was a fresh installation.


lsdev -Cc disk

will list the disks AIX sees - with a short description of how AIX sees them. NonIBM disks are generally typed as: disk osdisk        scsi  Other SCSI Disk Drive

To get a list of disk types and sizes AIX recognizes use:

lsdev -Pc disk


I generally use either:

shutdown -Fh #halt system
or
shutdown -Fr #reboot system

the -F option is similar to saying "now" with other versions of UNIX and Linux.
With the AIX you installed, or with an Apple O/S? Check the list of recognized devices. For an indivudial disk use:

lsattr -EHl hdiskX ## the H argument is optional, for headings


execute the command:
diag

Go to the third general area: Task Selection
In this area there is an option to format or certify SCSI disks.

Just remember that in the heydays of AIX 4.1.X 4G disks were huge! 320Mbyte and 660Mbyte disks were the standard. Hard to believe!!

Well I hope this takes care of most of your short term issues. I am checking friends of friends for the Apple update.

p.s. I'll look up the command to install the German language filesets - officially, rather than just copying.

Please provide the output from command:

# lsdev -Cc adapter

An update to keep You informed...

I didn´t get very far until now so further questions / informations will have to wait a bit. In the meantime I got the book which describes AIX 4.1 / 4.3 a bit into deep. This book and some more researches teached me a bit more about my special machine and it´s AIX.

First of all: the ANS is much more close to a RS/6000 system than to a PowerMac 9500 - this explains why lots of Apple hardware won´t work as expected (and in return: much more IBM hardware from this time will work). For example: the Apple 10/100 card will only work with 10 MBps - there is no way to force it to operate in 100 MBps mode. It has to be a 3com for PowerPC systems or several IBM cards. So for now I will have to look out for such a card (got a compatibility list by now <sigh>). The same is for graphics cards.

Now for the AIX versions: AIX 4.1.4 does not contain any other languages than US English. Only option I had is to install the Swiss German keyboard layout which actually works. AIX 4.1.5 contains all other languages so I installed the Swiss German language surroundings. After I´ve noticed that far more informations are only available in English I decided to reinstall AIX 4.1.5 in English language - I can change that later on if the machine is up and running.

For the diag / low-level format thing: As the ANS does not have a BIOS but an OpenFirmware dialog the command "diag" does not exist (who wonders). I have to boot off the CD to get a terminal window and "diag" does exist in this ANS AIX version - but it refuses to format disks larger than 36 GB. In fact AIX destroys drives larger than 36 GB (which killed a 146 GB drive already, not noticable anymore by my macs <sigh again>).

Right now I´m setting up tha ANS again with a clean English AIX 4.1.5 installation (there are absolutely NO 4.1.5.1 packages just 4.1.5.0).

The book is quite helpfull in some aspects but especially the TCP/IP setup confuses me again. Although I already asked for it I still do not understand how to determine the MAC adress of the one 10MBps adapter (SMC, some sort of DEC copy). What do I have to do where to get this information?

Another thought popped up to my head: as I´m dealing with several other old OSses, too I thought about "what about DHCP"? Some older UNIXes like NeXTstep or others do not understand DHCP - but I want to use my D-Link router to provide just one IP address according to the MAC of that adapter. Can this be done? Does AIX get along with such options / settings?

In between I tried to set up AppleTalk within this AIX. As I suppose nobody in here actually uses AppleTalk on their systems I´m pretty sure nobody can help me in here. Just to let You know what I tried in between: exactly following Apple´s guidelines in installing that stack (but without setting up TCP/IP before) the AppleTalk deamon refused to start so I couldn´t use my Macs to contact the ANS at least with AppleTalk.

I know that my way to handle all this is rather unusual and ineffective but I want to understand every single step I´m doing.

For the MAC address, or other VPD details of adapters, the "lscfg" command should help:
lscfg -vl ent0

 DEVICE            LOCATION          DESCRIPTION                         
                                                                         
 ent0              10-60             IBM 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter
                                     (23100020)                         
                                                                         
       Network Address.............2014BC986EFB      <-- the MAC address                     
       Displayable Message.........PCI Ethernet Adapter (23100020)       
       Device Specific.(YL)........P1/E1                                 

For DHCP at that version of AIX I'm not sure, but from 4.3.3 anyway here's some smit menus:
smit usedhcp  # For your AIX box to use DHCP to get it's IP address with tons of options
smit otherserv  # For three menu options relating to running a DHCP server, client and relay agent
                        to stop and start the relevant SRC services.

For more details, the man pages:
man dhcpsd
man dhcpcd
man dhcprd

For graphical configuration of DHCP, read about this one:
man dhcpsconf

Through all of that I see nothing to suggest that AIX can reserve an IP for a specific MAC at
that AIX level at least.

AIX, and the hardware, has always been very picky about the disks that will work with it.

I recently tried to use a 32GB LVD disk, which was almost identical to a supported IBM one,
taken from a PC RAID array unit going cheap on eBay (thought it might be worth a try at home),
and nothing doing there - at one point it would be seen with garbled lscfg data and then later
with a different connection path it wasn't even detected.  Same thing would happen with
my dear old model 250 machine (about the same time as your Apple) and it's limit of only
1 or 2GB particular disks (amazing now when you can get 8GB on a thumbnail SD card say).
As you have discovered, you must stick to the tested recommended hardware list,
or the results will be uncertain to say the least.  Although in theory, it should be possible
to get anything working if you can do some ODM editing, maybe write your own driver
kernel extension, etc...

One more option for MAC address discovery - if you can ping the IP from another machine,
then on that other machine run "arp -a" you should see the MAC address that has been seen.

With installation media in the drive try:

installp -d /dev/cd0 -L | grep device.pci.2310

With luck there will be a 4.1.5.0 fileset. Once this is installed - you will have the base filesets installed - and now you can use smitty update_all to update the 4.1.5.1 version.

AIX version 4 supports DHCP. If you want it to be a client just use:

# smitty usedhcp

This will make the changes to the config files in /etc and start the dhcpcd demons.

Ok, I double-checked my typing (allthough I did not find the "|" key on my swiss german Apple keyboard, I had to copy paste it). When using the command

installp -d /dev/cd0 -L | grep device.pci.2310

while AIX 4.1.5 install CD is in the drive it throws me an 0511-123 The volume on /dev/cd0 is not in backup format followed by a 0503-003 installp: the specified device /dev/cd0 is not a valid device or file error.

As I copied all installation files to my hard drive I re-tried this with the following command:

installp -d /usr/sys/inst.images -L | grep device.pci.2310

After hitting ENTER no error message appears but also no feedback at all. The block cursor just jumps to the next line and blinks. Has it installed something?

J

Thanks a lot for this, I´m beginning to understand some command line basics by now. I determined the MAC adresses of the onboard ethernet of the ANS and the MAC adress of the SMC NIcard (a DEC NIC clone I suppose). The MAC adress of the 100 MBit Apple NIC isn´t recognized (who wonders...).

I´m not sure if You understood my DHCP question. I already noticed that AIX can act as a DHCP server (although I still don´t know what to configure where) but this is not what I´m aiming at.
I´m using a D-Link router which acts as a DHCP server providing static IP adresses to all of my machines in accordance to the MAC adress of their NI. I don´t want to set up my ANS as DHCP routing machine, it just has to "get" it´s static IP adresses from the router while every NI in the ANS gets it´s own IP adress (a maximum of 7 possible IP adresses as the ANS has one onboard ethernet port and up to six possible PCI NI ports).

I already reserved my wanted IP adresses within the D-Link router and bound them to the MAC adresses of the ANS. Sorry for being not too exact with my question: is AIX able to "get" the IP adresses provided by the D-Link -> dynamically <- or do I have to configure AIX -> manually <- to self-assign this IP adress? For example NeXTstep 3.3 isn´t able to get IP adresses dynamically (unless you are installing an additional DHCP package NOT from NeXT). If You are not using this package You have to edit Your network settings by hand "reserving" the wanted IP adress inside the NeXTstep OS AND (!) within the used D-Link router.

J

Re: DHCP.

If you have configured your DHCP server to reply with a specific IP address to a specific MAC address then the command:

# smitty usedhcp

will take you into the AIX smit dialog to select the interface (en0, en1, etc) that you want configured via the DHCP client.

Re: installp ... -L - this only lists (L) the software found on installation media. As the first command gave an error, I must be making an error myself. For syntax you might try: installp -? to get the syntax message.

lslpp -L >x; grep 2310 x (rather than the pipe | character) to see if the devices.pci.2310* are installed.

Question: if you run cfgmgr is it still complaining about missing drivers?

When running cfgmgr it throws 0514-040 Error initializing a device into the kernel message (Method Error (/usr/lib/methods/cfgde)).

When running lslpp -L >x; grep 2310 x simply nothing happens, just a line break (the "#" now missing) and a blinking block cursor. So I don´t think it installed anything.

In the meantime I was able to "configure" TCP/IP at least a bit. Might be a small step for You but for me it is indeed a very large one! The AIX interfaces are still very confusing to me. So for now a 10MBps line is up on et1 and et0 and I was able to ping these from Mac OS X so this first step is the basis for all following =)

J

et0 and et1!

That is unusual. Seems Apple is using IEEE 802.3 rather than "Xerox Park" protocol.

The OSI layer two (or LAN) devices are entX and the OSI layer three devices are enX and etX.

regarding lslpp -L >x

what does wc x say. Maybe there is no software for you device on the CDROM.

I will try to figure which device is the method cfgde (cfgent is for configuring ent, or ethernet interfaces iirc. So I am looking for a device best described by 'de'.

Well, I'm not sure about this but it seems to me that any network interface on the ANS runs two protocols at the same time within every single interface adapter. When calling the communication devices from SMIT every interface offers a "et" and an additional "802.3" so it's up to You to choose one.

I've been fiddeling around with that box yesterday quite some time and I discovered several things that appear unusual to me. Regarding networking it took me some time to figure out that one single TCP/IP stack is handling ALL network interfaces at the same time - before I thought there is a single stack for every single interface as the ANS can handle up to seven interfaces at the same time.

Another strange thing which I have to resolve: the ANS utilizes a level 2 cache chip which is - to my surprise - not "configured" after a clean BOS install. I know that AIX notes every single chip and device so I thought as long as this is a "standard" chip from  Apple their version of AIX should have been "installing" it. I didn't notice it from within SMIT but from the early startup diagnostics (didn't know until yesterday that turning the key switch in to service position before boot up it evokes this service diagnostics). Compared to other Macs this machine really lacks in-deep documentation in very essential points.

I also noticed that the ANS can handle a Quantum 40 GB DLT tape drive for backups but - instead of the built-in DDS2 tape drive - it can not rewind the tape for example in  order to boot of that DLT tape and restore the system. When booting off the installation CD the tape can at least be used for OS and system restoration. At any other point the DLT seems to work fine. The DDS2 can boot and install / restore but I don't know how to activate the hardware compression (must be software-driven as this Apple tape DDS doesn't feature jumpers for this option). 4 GB of tape space is not as much as I may need in the future. Thanks to the DLT it uses hardware compression so I'm having the option of 80 GB per tape.

Another odd thing about the ANS: Apple states the tray drives as "automatically terminated and SCSI ID given". While the drives really do get their correct SCSI ID dependig on the drive tray they are in the SCSI chain is not terminated or at least not terminated correctly. You still have to use jupers for that one meaning that several Seagate drives can not be used at the end of the chain because they lack termination by jumper setting.

After all my ANS seems to be very close to an IBM 43p machine - a Pro at least told me that  so I hope this can solve some compatibility questions a bit better.

J

AIX uses one IP stack for IPv4, all interfaces, and in the newer versions (starting with AIX 4.3.0) an additional stack for IPv6.

Focusing on IPv4 and AIX 4.1: each ethernet adapter runs at one speed (10 or 100) and either half or full duplex, depending on driver support.

The configuration of the adapter can be read by: lsattr -El entX
The actual status of an active adapter can be read by: entstat -d entX (output similiar to netstat -m, but not exactly the same)

Each ether adapter supports two IP protocols: what I call "Xerox Park" - iirc the original Ethernet LAN (layer 2) description; and IEEE 802.3 (also know as dot 3, token ring, e.g. is dot 5, or 802.5, etc., etc..). In AIX IP interface terms these interfaces are, respectively: { adapter, Xerox, dot 3 } :: { entX, enX, etX }

IP interfaces can be configured via ODM settings via:
chdev -l enX -a netaddr=10.168.1.1 -a netmask=255.255.255.0 -a state=up
or directly via ifconfig
ifconfig enX 10.168.1.1 netmask=255.255.255.0 up

To see if an interface is configured via ODM, or what it should ODM think it should be:
lsattr -El enX

To bring an interface down/up without destroying any configuration information:
rmdev -l enX or ifconfig enX detach ## may also clear some routing information
Online: mkdev -l enX

To restore default routing, as far as interfaces permit:
mkdev -l inet0

These commands are what smit is executing for you. Review $HOME/smit.script to see what commands smit has performed. $HOME/smit.log has the output from these commands.

It is not usual to see the level 2 cache configured as a device - proc0,1,... for the processors is as far as it usually goes,
the cache is being used seamlessly.

Normally tape drives are configured with hardware compression enabled.  That can be disabled with "smit chgtpe" as a rule.
It's also possible to use the dot number extensions to the device file to call on attributes of a tape drive - although not compression as such, just density (i.e. different versions of tape formats as in DDS2, 3, 4 etc).  From "man rmt":

Special File Name Rewind-on-Close Retension-on-Open Bytes per Inch 
/dev/rmt* Yes No Density setting #1                                 
/dev/rmt*.1 No No Density setting #1                               
/dev/rmt*.2 Yes Yes Density setting #1                             
/dev/rmt*.3 No Yes Density setting #1                               
/dev/rmt*.4 Yes No Density setting #2                               
/dev/rmt*.5 No No Density setting #2                               
/dev/rmt*.6 Yes Yes Density setting #2                             
/dev/rmt*.7 No Yes Density setting #2   

 1. The values of density setting #1 and density setting #2 come from tape     
    drive attributes that can be set using SMIT. Typically density setting #1 
    is set to the highest possible density for the tape drive while density   
    setting #2 is set to a lower density. However, density settings are not   
    required to follow this pattern.                                           
 2. The density value (bytes per inch) is ignored when using a magnetic tape   
    device that does not support multiple densities. For tape drives that do   
    support multiple densities, the density value only applies when writing to
    the tape. When reading, the drive defaults to the density at which the tape
    is written.                                                               
 3. Most tape drives use 512-byte block size. The 8mm tape drive uses a minimum
    block size of 1024 bytes. Using SMIT to lower the block size, will waste   
    space.                                                                                               


Another one to look at is the "tctl" command, which does rewinding for you.

In the actual 43P machine the internal SCSI cable is a loop from mother board to devices
and back again - each device has to have jumper set SCSI id and the termination is
in the motherboard.  If you connect inappropriate devices (wrong SCSI type), that will
give SCSI termination errors - only a select band of devices is supported and will work !

Anyone would think my knuckles drag on the ground now  :D

Hmm... When running "diag -a" it mourns about a new resource that -> may <- require software installation:

- L2cache0     00-L0     L2 Cache

Within the ANS the Level 2 cache is a single additional chip which is placed on the mainboard and not the processor board. Removing it is no option as I know what can happen from other Macs.

J

Actually, as Simon Cowel says on occasion, I got that wrong. 
L2cache0 I see as "available" on a proper machine with such cache using "lsdev -C".
If your box genuinely requires software to be installed for it, then I would expect
the device not to be "available" but "defined".  If it is "defined", it's not in use,
forget about it.  If it's available, it's in use and will make no difference whatever
I expect.