It has been argued above (and with very convincing reasons so) that this is not the best/recommended way to do it.

I am always glad to see someone joining our forum and willing to do some AIX support, but: please do only give advice where you are positively sure to "know better" than what has already beeen stated. A low post counter will not hurt your credibility at all while giving advice where you aren't able to add to the knowledge base will do damage to your reputation here.

Thanks for your consideration.

---------- Post updated at 06:55 PM ---------- Previous update was at 06:47 PM ----------

Install the complete package at any rate! The reason (if nothing else) is: you will see the installed package in all the package management tools which are usually used to do version management and software management at the OS level. An admin who wants to know if gzip is installed will usually issue "lslpp -l | grep -i gzip" or something such and not starting to search for some obscure executable of dubious origin.

A second reason is that you can remove an installed package as a whole from the system whereas it is nearly impossible to "roll back" the system to a state before installation if you only copy files around. This might work for one executable or a second one, but as you install more and more files onto more and more systems your are guaranteed to lose an accurate picture of what is installed where and you will soon end up with systems which cannot be rebuilt to a specific point because nobody knows what is going on on them.

I hope this helps.

bakunin