UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hey Everyone,

First post and I'm coming here for help. Basically, the company I work for has been put in a weird situation with staff turnover. I used to manage an application on our IBM p5 running AIX 5.3, but I am now managing the whole server itself. I have no experience, no box to test on, and do not feel comfortable doing anything on our production box. It was well maintained and set up, but we do have auditors who come and that want certain config files and reports/ logs off the system, which I then google and find out how to get.

I found some old threads on people who bought systems on ebay and then purchased AIX disks.... but I'm not sure if that is outdated. My budget is personal and I really don't want to spend over 300$ on a test box if possible. But what is my best bet for learning and being able to set up another system with aix 5.3 so I can familiarize myself with it? What is the best book I can grab to learn AIX in an out?

I tried to search for a relevant topic but like I said, alot of older threads and I wasn't able to find much help...

Any help is appreciated. I find AIX confusing right now but has so much power. Look forward to learning it far in depth but I need to start on the right track.

Thanks All

Your friend will be the smit utility!
You can learn a lot by yourself looking in the 2 files generated by smit (smit.log smit.script)
Then look in the AIX forum here for more specific...
aix is a robust system so you should not be afraid, just be sure you made correct system backups (bootable...)