01-22-2010
Hi,
they are searching an AIX Clusteradmin with Linux skills for a high availability environment on stone old hardware (and probably equally stone old software, too). Probably they don't pay enough - not even for your country - to get a real AIX admin. The very old hardware means you'll have a lot of performance and configuration problems, a lot of hardware problems and you have basically no dignostic skills.
Of course all Unix has common ground - one or more cpus, some memory, a command line - but that is all true for Windows too.
AIX is a very special Unix - I am always joking that due to the ODM and smitty, it is probably closer to windows than to i.e. Solaris - without knowing anything about it at all, you're bound to fail badly.
Your hiring person apparently knows about as much about AIX and the position itself than you do or he would not offer you the job. You do not even know if there will be experienced AIX SAs out there that you can ask for help.
In my company I am an AIX-only SA. We have lots of Solaris and Linux too - but I don't touch them at all. Why? Because I don't know anything about their operating systems. Since I know that - and I know that our environment is business critical - I just stay away from them - and the Solaris and Linux guys stay away from my AIX systems.
There is a saying 'measure twice, cut once' - if you don't know how to measure, you will never make the cut.
At the end of the day it is obviously your decision only but getting hired for a job you know absolutely nothing about is a tough call.
Still you have likely some probation time and you seem to desperately need the money - and you don't have anything better to do - so why not accepting, working a few weeks in the environment and see how you get on and if you can get used to it?
Hope that helps
zxmaus
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LEARN ABOUT SUSE
perlos400
PERLOS400(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLOS400(1)
NAME
README.os400 - Perl version 5 on OS/400
DESCRIPTION
This document describes various features of IBM's OS/400 operating system that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl) is
compiled and/or runs.
By far the easiest way to build Perl for OS/400 is to use the PASE (Portable Application Solutions Environment), for more information see
http://www.iseries.ibm.com/developer/factory/pase/index.html This environment allows one to use AIX APIs while programming, and it provides
a runtime that allows AIX binaries to execute directly on the PowerPC iSeries.
Compiling Perl for OS/400 PASE
The recommended way to build Perl for the OS/400 PASE is to build the Perl 5 source code (release 5.8.1 or later) under AIX.
The trick is to give a special parameter to the Configure shell script when running it on AIX:
sh Configure -DPASE ...
The default installation directory of Perl under PASE is /QOpenSys/perl. This can be modified if needed with Configure parameter
-Dprefix=/some/dir.
Starting from OS/400 V5R2 the IBM Visual Age compiler is supported on OS/400 PASE, so it is possible to build Perl natively on OS/400. The
easier way, however, is to compile in AIX, as just described.
If you don't want to install the compiled Perl in AIX into /QOpenSys (for packaging it before copying it to PASE), you can use a Configure
parameter: -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/QOpenSys/perl. This will cause the "make install" to install everything into that directory, while the
installed files still think they are (will be) in /QOpenSys/perl.
If building natively on PASE, please do the build under the /QOpenSys directory, since Perl is happier when built on a case sensitive
filesystem.
Installing Perl in OS/400 PASE
If you are compiling on AIX, simply do a "make install" on the AIX box. Once the install finishes, tar up the /QOpenSys/perl directory.
Transfer the tarball to the OS/400 using FTP with the following commands:
> binary
> site namefmt 1
> put perl.tar /QOpenSys
Once you have it on, simply bring up a PASE shell and extract the tarball.
If you are compiling in PASE, then "make install" is the only thing you will need to do.
The default path for perl binary is /QOpenSys/perl/bin/perl. You'll want to symlink /QOpenSys/usr/bin/perl to this file so you don't have
to modify your path.
Using Perl in OS/400 PASE
Perl in PASE may be used in the same manner as you would use Perl on AIX.
Scripts starting with #!/usr/bin/perl should work if you have /QOpenSys/usr/bin/perl symlinked to your perl binary. This will not work if
you've done a setuid/setgid or have environment variable PASE_EXEC_QOPENSYS="N". If you have V5R1, you'll need to get the latest PTFs to
have this feature. Scripts starting with #!/QOpenSys/perl/bin/perl should always work.
Known Problems
When compiling in PASE, there is no "oslevel" command. Therefore, you may want to create a script called "oslevel" that echoes the level
of AIX that your version of PASE runtime supports. If you're unsure, consult your documentation or use "4.3.3.0".
If you have test cases that fail, check for the existence of spool files. The test case may be trying to use a syscall that is not
implemented in PASE. To avoid the SIGILL, try setting the PASE_SYSCALL_NOSIGILL environment variable or have a handler for the SIGILL. If
you can compile programs for PASE, run the config script and edit config.sh when it gives you the option. If you want to remove fchdir(),
which isn't implement in V5R1, simply change the line that says:
d_fchdir='define'
to
d_fchdir='undef'
and then compile Perl. The places where fchdir() is used have alternatives for systems that do not have fchdir() available.
Perl on ILE
There exists a port of Perl to the ILE environment. This port, however, is based quite an old release of Perl, Perl 5.00502 (August 1998).
(As of July 2002 the latest release of Perl is 5.8.0, and even 5.6.1 has been out since April 2001.) If you need to run Perl on ILE,
though, you may need this older port: http://www.cpan.org/ports/#os400 Note that any Perl release later than 5.00502 has not been ported to
ILE.
If you need to use Perl in the ILE environment, you may want to consider using Qp2RunPase() to call the PASE version of Perl.
AUTHORS
Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> Bryan Logan <bryanlog@us.ibm.com> David Larson <larson1@us.ibm.com>
perl v5.12.1 2010-04-26 PERLOS400(1)