Talk:IBM AIX (operating system)
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[edit] Unix transition guide
Anyone care to outline a introduction guide for persons already familiar with Unix? Links? Thanks, Gchriss 20:37, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] AIX 1.0 and SVR3
The article states that AIX 1.0 was based on SVR3, but according to UNIX System V the latter was released a year later. Qwertyus 22:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] AIX on IBM Mainframes
I changed the previous MVS/ESA section and replaced it with AIX on IBM Mainframes. AIX/370 and AIX/ESA information is very hard to come by because the operating system was not much of a success and didn't last long. I also removed the note about AIX/ESA being based off of OSF/1 because I could find no credible information saying such (and it seems unlikely). I found the introduction date on IBM's Year in Review website and based the release date off of Unix History (http://www.levenez.com/unix/). I also found some information on the MVS/ESA article. There are official IBM documents in BookManager format on AIX/370 available at this site (http://www.tavi.co.uk/ps2pages/aix.html). TimP 21:27, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
As someone who worked on AIX/ESA, I can confirm it was indeed a port of OSF/1. Why do you think it's unlikely? Also, the information in the AIX article that AIX/370 was rebranded as AIX/ESA is wrong. They were separate operating systems. Finally, while AIX/370 was restricted to running as a VM guest, AIX/ESA did not have this restriction and could be run natively. -Dave Marquardt, AIX/ESA developer from 1989 to 1993.
AIX/ESA did run natively on the mainframe and the kernel had little in common with AIX for the RS/6000. It was a port of OSF/1. I also was a developer of this OS from 1989 to about 1992. My team did the disk and tape support (which was ALL native). I have seen an AIX/ESA machine with a 1000 people logged on. Technically impressive, but didn't sell! Some said this was because MVS Open Edition was developed as a corporate "immune response" from the very large MVS development team. - Dick Johnson
AIX/370 was a port of the LOCUS clustering operating system from Locus Computing Corporation, which was a commercialization of an ARPA research project at UCLA led by Dr. Gerald J. Popek (of Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements fame). You can see the book on Amazon.com -- ISBN 0262161028, "The LOCUS Distributed System Architecture", edited by Gerald J. Popek and Bruce J. Walker, MIT Press, 1985 (you may notice my name on Chapter 4). It was based on 4.1BSD and was not anywhere near the same branch of the UNIX family tree as IBM's AIX on the RT, for example. The same OS also ran on the IBM PS/2, as well as the VAX and a couple other Instruction Set Architectures (same source, different binaries of course). I think IBM called it Transparent Computing Facility (TCF), and I think it was also called Transparent Network Computing (TNC) at some point in time, I believe by Locus attempting to sell the technology to other buyers in addition to IBM. (It is a bit disappointing to note that the IBM370/AIX page does not seem to recognize this, and talks about the RS6000 version of AIX and the IBM370 verion as though they were the same thing; but then it seemed to me that IBM was pretty deliberate in using the "AIX" brand in a way that was consistent and made it look like one product.) The book referenced above was published during a time when the contract between Locus and IBM was still supposed to be secret, but Locus apparently got permission to credit IBM without making a direct statement, and that can be seen on pages xv (Preface) and xvii (Acknowledgments). I think it was an editing error that the example discussed on page 104 (first paragraph of section 6.5) was published talking about a "370" site -- I think all those examples were supposed to have been changed to "68K" instead (which LOCUS did run on). Amazon.com will let you see these -- I used the "search inside" feature to find "IBM" and "370". There are a few hints around: http://www-sop.inria.fr/parallel/DR:/lsf/man/tcsh.1.html (search for "TCF"); http://www.puffin.com/~lynn/99.html, http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#22, http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html (search for "locus") Dave Butterfield 23:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC) co-chief technical lead for support of AIX/370 and AIX/PS2 at Locus, February 1989 - May 1992.
I just looked around and found that Locus delivered AIX for both the 370 and the PS/2 to IBM for acceptance testing in October and November of 1986. It was delivered to IBM in Boeblingen, West Germany by Evelyn Walton, one of the founders of Locus. Dave Butterfield 00:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Probably a Silly-Mistake
Last line of the Text says:
"If you are on a text based terminal, running the smit program will invoke the text-based version."
Shouldn't it be:
"If you are on a text based terminal, running the smit program will invoke the GUI-based version."
Ignore the post if I am wrong, as I have no AIX experience. Just a curious reader and Linux/Unix enthusiast, who thought it is probably a mistake. Thanks. --202.63.114.107 09:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
I just tested and running "smit" on a text based terminal does indeed bring up the text based version. I to make the hard call to the text based version the command is "smitty". 141.155.63.6 21:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I am pretty sure the smit command senses if you are running in GUI or text mode and will use the appropriate display.--Mrmouse 15:40, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
This is correct. If you invoke "smit" without any options, it will determine if the $DISPLAY variable is set; if so, it will invoke the GUI-based version; if not, it will invoke the CLI-based version. Invoking SMIT as "smitty" forces the "tty" (CLI-based) version to run. This is, of course, by design. --SolarisBigot 16:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] A Correction
Actually AIX stands for "Advanced Interactive eXcutive" if memory serves me well. I remember back in the version 1 days they used to print that phrase on the 8" floppies you used to build it, and that always stuck wtih me. 141.155.63.6 21:05, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what is meant by "AIX v3 was the first OS to introduce a journaling file system". Does this mean it was the first to natively support a journalled FS? Because Veritas_File_System was the first journaling FS.
- AIX was the first to naitvely support a journalled FS. AIXv3 shipped in 1990 (and was working in-house years prior to that). When did Veritas start shipping thier product? linas 00:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "but also beat the competition by a factor of 10 in floating-point performance."
does anyone else find the breathless enthusiasm for AIX and the RS/6000 a little POV? i mean, just a bit?
Flagged appropiately. --SolarisBigot 17:09, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Incorrect info about SMIT command log
smit.log contains the output and results from actions that are performed, but does not contain much that would be usable in writing scripts. smit.script contains all the commands that are generated to execute an action, and is where one would get the commands to write their own script. -- Kel Byers, AIX Test Engineer
- I updated the article to reflect both files as you mentioned. --Unixguy 15:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Article name "IBM AIX (operating system)"
Why there is "(operating system)" in the article name? I think that there is not anything else called "IBM AIX". I am going to suggest renaming the article. --pabouk 07:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
- I agree that this is redundant, but I don't think it's the (operating system) part that should go, it's the "IBM" part. Coherent with: Tru64 UNIX, Solaris Operating System, Mac OS X, HP-UX, OS/2 and IRIX. All proprietary operating systems without the vendor name in the article. The odd man out is Microsoft Windows but that's all in order since MS couldn't register just "windows" as a trademark. -- Henriok 15:21, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
