AIX

Hello everyone,

I have just joined your forum even though I have been using it on and off for couple of months now. Up until now I have been able to find any information I needed by just browsing this site or performing a Google search, but now I'm stuck!. I was hoping you could help me with the following...

This is what's happening:-
I'm a Windows Systems Admin at my company. They have 4 or 5 Unix boxes (IBM AIX 5.2 and 5.3) in the server room that are used specifically by one Dept in the company. Couple of months ago, the Unix Admin decided he had enough and left for pastures new. The company at the time said they would be looking for a replacement straight away, but so far nothing! In the meantime, they are passing more and more problems regarding these boxes to me. Most of the time it is just comparatively easy stuff they want me to do, like restoring data and making sure backups have completed OK and checking file systems, monitoring services, etc. Couple of days ago however, they asked me to setup a PC in the aforementioned Dept running VNC displaying WSM (Web System Management) from one of their servers. What they want is to have WSM running on the server but viewing it from this machine over VNC and therefore keep an eye on the server themselves instead of asking me to do the checks. I tried downloading Xvnc and tightvnc and compiling them on this server as per instructions I found on the Internet, however the compile process keeps failing with error (after reading couple of websites, I believe the problem is that I'm missing some development libraries). I also tried looking for a package already compiled for AIX, but couldn't find a free one anywhere, the only one I found was RealVNC but the company is not prepared to pay for a license! (Apologies if I am going on and on, just trying to give as much information as possible)

As I was not having much luck with VNC, I decided to look for an alternative and see where I end up. This route almost worked! After reading couple of threads on this forum, I found out that I could have an X Emulator on the desktop computer displaying the screen from the Server! I decided to have a go at this, so I downloaded Cygwin and Putty to my Desktop and connected to the Server and set it up to forward the display to my machine (followed instructions from this forum). As I said above, this almost worked, but for the fact that the display I get on my desktop is horrible! Apparently is called Mwm and it just looks bad, the screen resolution is like 600x400, the menu (right-click) has almost nothing in it and to top it all, the keyboard seems to be in a weird foreign language (I can't type properly, some of the keys like 's' or 'x' don't work and some are changed, like 'f' is now 's' and '/' is now 'm')

The weird thing is that if I go to the server itself, the display (Window Manager) on it is quite nice, so not sure why I don't get that same display on my emulator

Anyway, I know this is a long thread, but if any of you guys could help me sort at least one of my problems, I would really appreciate it.
Whether I end up using VNC or the X Emulator, it really doesn't matter, I just need to get one of them working, so please, if you have any ideas?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this thread and thank you for any advise

Regards,

Junior

AIX 5 upwards is supposed to have PowerPC Linux compatibility. If the program fails to compile as a true AIX program can you compile it as a PowerPC Linux program?

Hi Porter,

Thank you for replying. I don't have a PowerPC machine running Linux where I could compile the program (not sure if that is what you mean).
I could try looking for a Linux package built for PowerPC but will I be able to install it on AIX (I'm assuming the package will be in either RPM or DEB)

Thanks again

That would be quicker than trying to cross compile on AIX


AIX supports RPM (assuming you have installed the Linux compatibility)

Hello again Porter,

How would I check if I have Linux Compatibility on my AIX box?

Thanks

Hello everyone,

I have managed to get VNC working on AIX by installing rpm.rte and then the VNC rpm package. However, I am now back at the issue I first had with Cygwin! The desktop I'm getting with VNC is MWM again and it just looks horrible and I don't know how to change the Window Manager to CDE for example which is the display at the AIX console

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

When you start Cygwin, type "XWin -query ip-of-rs6k"

You should then get the AIX CDE login.

XNest is a similar tool for using an X desktop within an X desktop.