AIX

Ok, I'm an admin (assistant, helper, enabler) in a software test lab. I don't do the testing, but I help set things up for people who do. I'm experienced in Windows and various virtualization techniques, but not so much in Linux or Unix. I've been able to muddle through some things with Unix, and learn a lot about things to do in Linux. I have good enough logical reasoning skills that I was able to figure out how to reinstall the OS on several AIX and HP/UX machines.

Somehow, while figuring out how to reinstall AIX, I became the lab's AIX "guru" to many people. I don't know how this happened. Apparently, being able to figure out how to reinstall the OS made me the most knowledgable person on AIX in the lab. Sad situation, I know.

Now, my boss is asking me to install certain patch levels on a couple of our AIX machines for certain tests. I did the initial installs on these machines, and they're at 6.1.1.0, but we need to test on 6.1.5 and 6.1.5.7 for a specific customer situation. Apparently, we aren't seeing a problem with 6.1.1.0, but it could be related to later patches IBM issued.

The problem comes with the fact that I have no clue how to update AIX at all. I've taken a look through smitty, and I can't even find where patches or updates can even be found. I can't find any sort of patches on IBM's site, probably because of how badly they restrict info on AIX.

Can anyone help?

IBM Fix Central will become your new friend. You can download patches and service packs from there. Access used to be direct, but now you have to create a user account (access is free).

IBM Support: Fix Central

You'll be directed to either use the download manager, or an ftp server to download the patches and\or service packs.

Once you have them downloaded onto the AIX box, go into the directory and run this command to install them (will run for a bit):

Code:

/usr/lib/instl/sm_inst installp_cmd -a -l -d '.' -f 'all' '-c' '-N' '-g' '-X' '-Y'

Thank you very much. I managed to find the patches I needed, download them, and put them on an NFS share to transfer over to the test server. I'll be able to patch the server soon. This should be a HUGE help.

It can also be helpful to check out the menues of SMIT. It also has a short path for this, to get directly to the specific menues: smitty update_all

yeah, I tried that, and it asked for a "INPUT device". I have no idea what it's asking for.

The input device its asking for is just the location of the files that you've put on the NFS share. If the NFS share is mounted on

Code:

/mnt/update

then thats what the INPUT Device would be.

Often in smitty pressing F1 will provide some useful ideas as to what the field in question needs to contain.

Good Luck.

Everything worked beautifully. I put these instructions in our wiki (along with giving due credit and linking to this forum.) So, the people I work with will be able to do this without me.