AIX

AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is a UNIX System V operating system that was developed by the IBM company. Initially it stood for "Advanced IBM Unix" but the name was probably not approved by the legal department^{[citation needed]} and was changed to "Advanced Interactive eXecutive"

AIX runs on IBM eServers pSeries servers, using 32-bit and 64-bit IBM POWER family processors.

Some of the unique features of AIX include the Object Data Manager (ODM, a system information database). The AIX integration of "Logical Volume Management" (logical volume manager) within the kernel is gradually being included in various free UNIX-like operating systems.

AIX 5L 5.3 can use a maximum of:

• 64 processors
• 2 TB in main memory
• JFS2: 16 TB maximum file system supported

Version history

There have been different versions of AIX over time; some have already been abandoned. AIX V1, which ran on the IBM RT/PC (AIX/RT) appeared in 1986. This version of the operating system was based on System V Release 3. Since 1989, AIX has been the operating system for workstations and servers. RS/6000 (AIX/6000). During the development of AIX, features of 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD were integrated by IBM and the Interactive Systems Corporation (Under contract with IBM)

Supported Architectures

• PowerPC, POWER

AIX V1 ran on the PS2 MCA bus of the PCs, the latest version of these was 1.3. AIX V2 ran on PSTN (6150) systems, the latest version was 2.2.1. AIX V3 was a licensed developer release for OSF and the LVM (Logical Volume Manager) was incorporated into OSF/1. AIX V3.1 was available in the first quarter of 1990.

Versions

• AIX 7.2, October 2015
• AIX 7.1, March 2012
• AIX 6.1, November 2007
  • Implementation of WPAR(virtualization at Level Operating System)
  • Live Aplication Mobility
  • Live Partition Mobility(Capacity to move a full S.O. from one server to another through the network without turning it off, transparent for applications and users)
• AIX 5L 5.3, August 2004
  • Support for NFS Version 4
  • Advanced Accounting
  • SCSI Virtual
  • Virtual Ethernet
  • Support for Simultaneous multithreading (SMT)
  • Support for Micro-Participation
  • JFS2 quota support
  • Support for JFS2 file system compaction
  • JFS2 quota support
• AIX 5L 5.2, October 2002
  • The minimum version required for the POWER5 processor
  • Support for MPIO Fibre Channel discs
  • iSCSI Software Initiator
  • Support for dynamic LPAR
  • Allows to reduce the size of file systems
• AIX 5L 5.1, May 2001
  • The minimum version required for the POWER4 processor and the last one to support Micro channel architecture.
  • 64-bit kernel introduction, installed but not activated by default.
  • JFS2
  • Static LPAR Support
  • "L" means affinity with Linux
  • Trusted Computing Base (TCB)
• AIX 4.3.3, September 1999
  • Added online Backup functionality
  • Workload Management (WLM)
• AIX 4.3.2, October 1998
• AIX 4.3.1, April 1998
• AIX 4.3, October 1997
  • Support for 64bit processor architecture
• AIX 4.2.1, April 1997
  • Support for NFS Version 3
• AIX 4.2, May 1996
• AIX 4.1.5, August 1996
• AIX 4.1.4, October 1995
• AIX 4.1.3, July 1995
• AIX 4.1.1, October 1994
• AIX 4.1, August 1994
• AIX v4, 1994
• AIX v3.2 1992
• AIX v3.1
  • Introduction of the Journaled File System (JFS)
• AIX v3, 1990
• AIX v2
• AIX v1, 1986

Interfaces

Graphic

The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is the default graphical environment of the AIX system. As part of its affinity with GNU/Linux and the "AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications (ATLA)" the free environments KDE and GNOME are also available.

Text Based

SMIT, also known as smitty, is an AIX interface management tool. It allows the user to navigate through a hierarchical menu instead of using a command line. Experienced system administrators make use of the F6 command which displays the command line for complex tasks.

SMIT and smitty are the same program, however smitty is the text-based version, and SMIT is the graphical version that runs under X Window. If you're in a text-based terminal, running the SMIT program will call the text version.