Hey,

Learning the ropes of AIX administration (coming from HP-UX background), and I gotta admit reading all the software/fix installation commands in AIX is a little confusing, and to make matters worse, none of the books have walkthrough examples (except for the BOS installation steps). Have a few questions:

1. Why are there two commands for installing software? installp and instfix?

2. Are there any good walkthrough examples for:

(a) Downloading + Installing APARs

(b) Installing + Installing fixes (PTFs?)

(c) Downloading + Installing say Java SDK

(d) Preparing a bundle locally, which includes say Firefox and HP GlancePlus

3. How do you determine dependancies? e.g. If the vendor tells you that you need to install fix XYZ, will the download of that fix automatically include the dependancies?

For HP, doing the above is basically a matter of navigating to ITRC, select the OS (11i v3), selecting the patch IDs (which automatically get the dependancies), upload to system, then swinstall.

4. I noticed that you can use "bffcreate" to copy software from say CD-ROM to disk somewhere. Is it possible to merge the contents of two CD's into one software "depot" on disk, then selectively remove junk you don't need from that "depot", then burn to a single DVD?

Cheers.