AIX

Cheers bakunin
Your help is awesome.
I am happy I got 2 of them, and now i know how to get them going, and get into them, it is awesome. The units are running 5.1 AIX. I will keep one as AIX. And the other one will run Linux. It is easier just to remove the SCSI drive, put another one in, and go for a fresh install of Linux? Much like you can with a x86 (32bith) and x86 64bit?

*blushes* Thank you, you're welcome.

Yes, you can do that. Be aware, though, that the integration of hardware and sofware is much higher than with PCs, which are regularly built out of a heap of nondescript components. Original IBM disks have a special firmware on board which makes them known to an AIX system instantly. Non-IBM disks show up there as "other SCSI disk", whereas IBM disks are recognized for size, queue depth, etc..

How much of this applies to Linux i don't know. I never ran Linux on that old systems. Just give it a try and if everything fails you can still put the original disks back into the case.

You might also have a look if the rootvg is mirrored. You could unmirror the rootvg then, this way freeing one of the installed disks and use this for the installation of Linux. Unlike PCs the firmware ("microcode" in IBM speak) maintains a "boot list" of devices to boot from. In fact there are 2 bootlists, one for the "service" and one for the "normal" key position. IBM systems had a key (not sure if the H50 has still one or if that device has gone virtual already on it) with 3 position: "locked", "service" and "normal". See the bosboot commands man page for more details about that. It is used to modify that bootlist and put boot sectors onto devices.

Caution: bosboot is an AIX command. If there is a similar command in PPC-Linux so that you can get back to have AIX booted i don't know.

To find out if the rootvg is mirrored (as root):

Code:

# lsvg -l rootvg

Shows a list of LVs in the rootvg. If the column for "physical partition" ("PP") shows the same number as for "logical partition" ("LP") the respective LV is not mirrored. If the number is twice (thrice) the number for "LP" it is mirrored (or doubly mirrored). If you have a mirrored rootvg you can use unmirrorvg to remove one of the mirrors and then reducevg to get the respective disk out of the rootvg.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

G'day bakunin
Sorry to keep at you about this, but you seem to have the knowledge i have forgotten about over the years.
My two H50 RS/6000 are running AIX 5.1. Am just inquiring as to where i can firmware updates for both the SMS, HMC etc. Or am i stuck?
If there are, can let me know where i can find them?

Microcode updates for current systems are downloaded via Fixdist Central, but the H50 is long out of support.

What you probably need is this page, which lists all the microcodes and service processor updates there are. As it seems the last one (from 2004) added support for AIX 5.3 so you should indeed go with this one.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Addendum: the download page you are looking for is here.

cheers. I will give that a shot. see what happens

bakunin I'd say you were about 5 years out there, this shows 2009 code:
http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp...1&mtm=7025-H50
HTH

gday dukessd,
cheers for the post, however, knowing the fact the IBM stopped the H50 RS/6000, why would they still do firmware?