It's nice to be an AIX geek when questions like this arrive...
...I suddenly feel relevant.
> I have a machine sitting in the corner doing nothing but collecting
> (well gathering because it is on) dust. Can I run Linux (RedHat, SuSE,
> Debian,etc) on it? Do I need IFL or anything else? I know nothing
> about the box other than it is running AIX right now. I'd rather
> put linux on it and run it as an enterprise syslog and ftp server.
> I only want linux on it because I like it and I don't know much about
> AIX other than we only have one person who know much about it.
> There are many more people that know linux where I work. Not
> many, but it's more than 1.
AIX has strengths that Linux lacks (for now, at least). The
AIX LVM is actually pretty easy to cope with and, in some ways,
smitty is easier to work with than yast/yast2/linuxconf...
Some pre-requisites:
1) Is this system driving an SSA shelf? Find out by:
lsdev -C | grep '^pdisk'
If you get _anything_ listed you're using SSA which
Linux can't drive. Of course, if all of the entries
say "Defined" then they've been disconnected and are
irrelevant (we hope).
2) What's the SCSI drive list?
lsdev -C | grep ,
will report the drives and their SCSI addresses.
Anything with "Defined" instead of "Available" was
removed from the system.
The H50 includes all kinds of neat features; I would expect,
though, that the system is running headless (using a serial
console) so this complicates installing Linux (to the point
that I just slapped in a display adapter to get it installed
on a 43P-150, which is PC-like).
The AIX system may be a better choice for syslog/ftp services
and will provide Samba quite comfortably, though, even with
AIX 5L I've not been able to compile Hercules _at all_.
Some advice: The drives are hotswap. If you've got some
spares lying about you can remove what's in the machine (after
shutting it down) and place just one drive in the bottom slot
of the leftmost sixpack (assuming SCSI sixpacks) then you can
follow the directions and attempt to boot from the appropriate
CD (Assuming SuSE 7.3, which works pretty nicely on a 43P) and
select the install serial (I don't recall the precise phrasing).
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PARTITION the system yourself; Let SuSE do
it for you. It needs to ensure the presence of the boot logical
volume in just the right place. This took me too many tries
before I caught on to my mistake.
If you want additional advice from me, e-mail me directly at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (my main non-work e-mail, which gets forwarded
to my home system via UUCP) and I'll see how I can help you.
--
John R. Campbell Speaker to Machines [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- As a SysAdmin, yes, I CAN read your e-mail, but I DON'T get that bored!
Disclaimer: All opinions expressed above are those of John R. Campbell
alone and are seriously unlikely to reflect the opinions of
his employer(s) or lackeys thereof. Anyone who says
differently is itching for a fight!
