Given that
/etc/inittab is a system file that could be replaced during an upgrade (okay, so you probably won't be patching AIX 4) I would suggest it is a bad place to put things. Assuming it has the line marked
rc, then a better place to put things would be in
/etc/rc.d/rc2.d (or whatever is the default run-level marked in
/etc/inittab)
The files in there starting with a capital S are run with the parameter
start when moving into that run-level. Have a look at a few to see how they are generally written. You will probably find that they are linked (hard or soft) to
/etc/init.d and there are often comparable K scripts which are called when stopping a service.
The files are executed in sequence that they are found, so S20inet runs before S95Oracle or whatever you have defined.
You can put all sorts in here. They are generally Bourne Shell scripts, but you can override this with the usual
#!/bin/ksh or even
#!/bin/csh in the first line. You can then go on and set up your environment and fire up the code you really want.
Does that help? Generally you would use
S99myscript so that all other processes to do with mounting filesystems, starting services etc. have all completed before you try to do your stuff.
Don't worry about AIX 4 either. It's not too long ago that I eventually retired an AIX 3.2.5 server
We moved the applications to AIX 4.3.3
Robin