OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18246/AIX_6_Beta_Program_Opens Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 18 May 2013 12:35:53 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com be warned http://www.osnews.com/thread?254697 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254697 not everything is what is seems Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (predictor) Comments I'm sure... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254698 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254698 ...they are setting up the torrents as we speak. Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fretinator) Comments RE: I'm sure... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254765 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254765 Considering what hardware it takes to run AIX, I see this Beta as having very limited appeal. Although I would be curious to see what IBM has done to improve the installation process. People here complain about Solaris being hard to install have never installed AIX, if they had they would seriously reconsider their stance on Solaris. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Robert Escue) Comments RE[2]: I'm sure... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254778 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254778 Nobody is expecting the AIX open beta to be a summer blockbuster. But it's a major improvement from the traditional beta, which treats customers as if they are applying to work at a three-letter government agency before letting them test pre-release software. However, note that open doesn't mean open-source. It's a public beta. That's what Microsoft would call it, and that's what IBM should have called it.

Enterprise customers don't like to be guinea pigs, but they do want to make sure that their ducks are in line before they upgrade to new operating systems. An increasing number of System P customers are using platform features like Shared LPAR that make evaluating new versions of AIX much less expensive.

Installing AIX is about as simple as any OS I've ever installed. Once the install media is booted (from CD/DVD or from a NIM server), there are only two main questions: language and installation type (overwrite, preservation, or upgrade). Installation takes 1-2 hours over a heavily-loaded 10Mbit network.

Will the AIX 6 open beta be a resounding success or a big flop? I don't know. All I know is that nobody will be complaining about the drop shadows. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments RE[3]: I'm sure... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254781 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254781 What I don't like about installing AIX is the choices you are forced to make at install time (this might have changed since my last attempt using 5L 5.2) like whether or not you are going to use the CAPP/EAL4+ install option or use the Trusted Computing Base (a requirement for DoD installs). The two options I just mentioned can be installed only at install time. Another bone to pick is installing the BOS before being able to install anything else (X, man pages, etc.). If this has improved from 5L 5.2 great, if not then IBM in my opinion has some work to do.

I don't mind being a guinea pig, I have the hardware to support experimentation and have sold management on using Betas to examine improvements in functionality and to see whether they can be exploited to our benefit.

And while the idea of using a Shared LPAR is nice, it is limited to systems that have sufficient free resources to create and support the LPAR or LPARS. And if my memory serves me correctly, the ability to create an LPAR is system specific (unless this has changed as well). Why can't IBM do something similar to Solaris Live Upgrade, where all you do is set up an alternate boot environment and install the new OS in free space on a given disk?

You're right, nobody will be complaining about the drop shadows. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Robert Escue) Comments AIX http://www.osnews.com/thread?254787 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254787 How AIX compares to FreeBSD or Linux?

Can anyone explain me in few words? Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (indiocolifa) Comments RE: AIX http://www.osnews.com/thread?254799 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254799 AIX doesn't run on commodity hardware, and neither FreeBSD nor Linux exploit the full potential of IBM System P. Linux supports most System P features, but it isn't nearly as optimized as AIX.Edited 2007-07-12 03:31 Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments I signed and... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254806 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254806 They didn't allow me to install the so called "Open" software; meanwhile they were asking for very detailed info about me like personal address, work address, telephone number and other things.

Let them learn from sun how things should be to call it Open.
They need to get hurted to start opening their AIX; it might be too late for them though in the future, even sun was considered late to jump on OSS bandwagon but its OK for them still.

IBM, my advice to you is to open source your Unix and port it to x86 with a universal programming language. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hraq) Comments RE: I signed and... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254813 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254813 "IBM, my advice to you is to open source your Unix and port it to x86 with a universal programming language."

Fortunately we can count on IBM not to take the advice of random forum posters who do not even understand the target market for AIX. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments RE: I signed and... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254814 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254814 """
IBM, my advice to you is to open source your Unix and port it to x86 with a universal programming language.
"""

What would be the point? AIX is for IBM architectures, and its close integration with those is its glory and the reason for its existence. IBM has chosen an open source OS for everything else, and that OS is Linux.

AIX is not to IBM as Solaris is to Sun. Very different relationships. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments I will test it http://www.osnews.com/thread?254829 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254829 I will test AIX 6 as soon as I have processor available.

WPAR seems so stronger than solaris zone we are alreading using. You can save their state with all the execution stack and move them on another host and restart it just as nothing happens.

With WPAR manager you can manage all WPAR on all your AIX 6 hosts from a single point and monitor their usage. It's just like a HMC for WPAR.

w00t !! Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Duffman) Comments ps http://www.osnews.com/thread?254851 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254851 PlayStation 3 is not only an expensive game console but also an excellent video player. It could play high-def Blu-ray movies in addition to standard DVDs with a Blu-ray drive

www.mp4-converter.net/ps3-converter/ Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (andersonoscar5) Comments RE: AIX http://www.osnews.com/thread?254871 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254871
How AIX compares to FreeBSD or Linux?

Can anyone explain me in few words?


In a few words? Here are two: Don't bother. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (iiifrank) Comments RE[4]: I'm sure... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254872 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254872 "Another bone to pick is installing the BOS before being able to install anything else (X, man pages, etc.). If this has improved from 5L 5.2 great, if not then IBM in my opinion has some work to do. "

X can be installed during the installation, the man pages have to come afterward. Note that is on a from-scratch install from the CD. In most of my customer's AIX environments, they're doing LPAR and using custom mksysb images and NIM to do their installation so everything they want is in there.

"Why can't IBM do something similar to Solaris Live Upgrade, where all you do is set up an alternate boot environment and install the new OS in free space on a given disk? "

They can, it's called alt_disk_install. You can also now have two different version of AIX installed on the same disk and choose the one you want to boot from at boot time. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chicklin) Comments RE: I will test it http://www.osnews.com/thread?254873 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254873 Yes, I'm very interested to test out WPAR. I think LPAR's are great and there is no match for their isolation, but I have a lot of customers using LPAR more for increased hardware utilization. I think WPAR will accomplish this goal just as easily with less complexity and resource overhead. We'll see. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chicklin) Comments RE[5]: I'm sure... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254877 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254877 The place I worked at did not have the hardware to support LPARS or allowed us to use NIM (DISA has a lousy view of remote installation). Our experimentation was limited to loaner hardware we got from IBM Global Services, so we did not have a permanent environment to work with as I do now. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Robert Escue) Comments Let me get this out of the way..... http://www.osnews.com/thread?254891 http://www.osnews.com/thread?254891 [sarcasm]

I hate AIX becasue its teh UNIX with a registry!!!

[/sarcasm] Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Civikminded) Comments