AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced , "ay-eye-ex") is a series of

proprietary {{Short pages monitor

IBM PS/2 releases

* AIX PS/2 v1.3, October 1992 ** Withdrawn from sale in US, March 1995 ** Patches supporting IBM ThinkPad 750C family of notebook computers, 1994 ** Patches supporting non PS/2 hardware and systems, 1993 * AIX PS/2 v1.2.1, May 1991 * AIX PS/2 v1.2, March 1990 * AIX PS/2 v1.1, March 1989

IBM RT releases

* AIX RT v2.2.1, March 1991 * AIX RT v2.2, March 1990 * AIX RT v2.1, March 1989 ** X-Windows included on installation media * AIX RT v1.1, 1986 * AIX RT v1.0, 1985

User interfaces

The default shell was

Bourne shell The Bourne shell (sh) is a shell command-line interpreter for computer operating systems. The Bourne shell was the default shell for Version 7 Unix. Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh—which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic l ...

up to AIX version 3, but was changed to

KornShell KornShell (ksh) is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn at Bell Labs in the early 1980s and announced at USENIX on July 14, 1983. The initial development was based on Bourne shell source code. Other early contributors were Bell ...

(ksh88) in version 4 for

XPG4 X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of i ...

and

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming in ...

compliance.

Graphical

The

Common Desktop Environment The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif widget toolkit. It was part of the UNIX 98 Workstation Product Standard, and was for a long time the Unix desktop associated with commercial ...

(CDE) is AIX's default

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

. As part of Linux Affinity and the free AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications (ATLA), open-source KDE Plasma Workspaces and

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

desktop are also available.

System Management Interface Tool

SMIT Smit is a Dutch occupational surname. It represents an archaic spelling of the Dutch word "smid" for "smith" (metal worker) and is the Dutch equivalent of the English surname Smith.Citation: Schulze, 2008 Frequency of occurrence in general popu ...

is the System Management Interface Tool for AIX. It allows a user to navigate a menu hierarchy of commands, rather than using the command line. Invocation is typically achieved with the command smit. Experienced system administrators make use of the F6 function key which generates the command line that SMIT will invoke to complete it. SMIT also generates a log of commands that are performed in the smit.script file. The smit.script file automatically records the commands with the command flags and parameters used. The smit.script file can be used as an executable shell script to rerun system configuration tasks. SMIT also creates the smit.log file, which contains additional detailed information that can be used by programmers in extending the SMIT system. smit and smitty refer to the same program, though smitty invokes the text-based version, while smit will invoke an X Window System based interface if possible; however, if smit determines that X Window System capabilities are not present, it will present the text-based version instead of failing. Determination of X Window System capabilities is typically performed by checking for the existence of the DISPLAY variable.

Database

Object Data Manager (ODM) is a database of system information integrated into AIX, analogous to the

registry Registry may refer to: Computing * Container registry, an operating-system-level virtualization registry * Domain name registry, a database of top-level internet domain names * Local Internet registry * Metadata registry, information system for re ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

. A good understanding of the ODM is essential for managing AIX systems. Data managed in ODM is stored and maintained as

objects Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ai ...

with associated attributes. Interaction with ODM is possible via

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

(API)

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

for programs, and

command-line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

utilities such as ''odmshow'', ''odmget'', ''odmadd'', ''odmchange'' and ''odmdelete'' for

shell script A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be scripting languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file man ...

s and users.

and its associated AIX commands can also be used to query and modify information in the ODM. ODM is stored on disk using

Berkeley DB Berkeley DB (BDB) is an unmaintained embedded database software library for key/value data, historically significant in open source software. Berkeley DB is written in C with API bindings for many other programming languages. BDB stores arbitr ...

files. Example of information stored in the ODM database are: *

Network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematic ...

configuration *

Logical volume management In computer storage, logical volume management or LVM provides a method of allocating space on mass storage, mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional Partition (computing), partitioning schemes to store volumes. In particular ...

configuration *Installed software information *Information for logical devices or

software driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems an ...

s *List of all AIX supported devices *Physical hardware devices installed and their configuration *Menus, screens and commands that SMIT uses

References

External links

IBM AIX
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aix IBM operating systems Power ISA operating systems PowerPC operating systems

IBM Aix AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced , "ay-eye-ex") is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Background Originally released for the IBM RT PC RISC ...

Object-oriented database management systems 1986 software