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IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

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Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#11

Post by inkyoto »

kristopolous wrote: post #4

AIX was/is one of the few big commercial unixes I've never got to touch, is it worth it?

It is hard to say about now, for most of the interesting AIX features are tightly coupled to the IBM hardware (e.g. dynamic CPU re-/allocation across LPAR's and a gazillion of other things), and the hardware is rare to come by nowadays.

For its time, though, AIX was highly innovative and was perhaps the first UNIX that bundled a LVM and a journaling file system into the standard system distribution (and not as separately purchased commercial products). It also has a single set of .a libraries which are both used as dynamic AND static libraries (courtesy of the XCOFF object file format). It also has uniform and very tidy naming conventions for command line utilities, e.g. anything that can create something (e.g. a user account, a user group, a logical volume etc) is prefixed with mk-, mutating commands are prefixed with ch-, destructive operations have the rm- prefix.

Pervasive performance metrics and counters across the entire system are also cool.

Lots of other small niceties I have forgotten about.

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#12

Post by SpaceInvader »

ourmandave wrote: post #10
kristopolous wrote: post #4

AIX was/is one of the few big commercial unixes I've never got to touch, is it worth it?

No. AIX is the "you can't have nice things" version of linux. Command options you take for granted aren't there in AIX. Search on Unix stack exchange and there's always a more complicated "here's how you do it in AIX."

I disagree. I used to be an AIX administrator for well over a decade, got certified in basically everything related to AIX being on the side hard core FreeBSD user (still have some servers). In my opinion AIX is indeed different, but rock solid and fun to work with.

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#13

Post by inkyoto »

inkyoto wrote: post #11
kristopolous wrote: post #4

AIX was/is one of the few big commercial unixes I've never got to touch, is it worth it?

It is hard to say about now, for most of the interesting AIX features are tightly coupled to the IBM hardware (e.g. dynamic CPU re-/allocation across LPAR's and a gazillion of other things), and the hardware is rare to come by nowadays. For its time, though, AIX was highly innovative and was perhaps the first UNIX that bundled a LVM and a journaling file system into the standard system distribution (and not as separa…

Oh, yeah, AIX is perhaps the only UNIX kernel out there that can preempt itself out of RAM into a swap space in nearly its entirety under a heavy memory shortage pressure, with the exception of the disk interrupt handler – to swap itself back in later, thanks to its peculiar VM subsystem design. It is no longer a material feature to have but is cool nevertheless.

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#14

Post by Nursie »

kristopolous wrote: post #4

AIX was/is one of the few big commercial unixes I've never got to touch, is it worth it?

I mean ... I used to write software in C that targeted AIX as well as HPUX, Solaris etc back in the 00s. It was fine. Posix compliant, had a C compiler, debugging was OK with dbx (IIRC you could get ddd to use dbx as its subordinate debugger, which was helpful).

The main selling point AFAICT was that it was on POWER, which has always been a pretty competitive set of processors, often faster than x86/64 in some (no doubt carefully massaged) metrics.

I think, like a lot of IBM systems and a lot of commercial unix, at that point it was ahead of the game in its system-paritioning capabilities, having LPARs much like z/OS (and Solaris Zones I guess).

I don't know if it has any other major unique selling points, as a C programmer I tended to focus on commonalities rather than differences!

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#15

Post by Nursie »

ourmandave wrote: post #10
kristopolous wrote: post #4

AIX was/is one of the few big commercial unixes I've never got to touch, is it worth it?

No. AIX is the "you can't have nice things" version of linux. Command options you take for granted aren't there in AIX. Search on Unix stack exchange and there's always a more complicated "here's how you do it in AIX."

Does the unix rosetta stone page still exist?

That was a godsend when trying to move between half a dozen commercial unix systems 15 years ago.

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#16

Post by icedchai »

ourmandave wrote: post #10
kristopolous wrote: post #4

AIX was/is one of the few big commercial unixes I've never got to touch, is it worth it?

No. AIX is the "you can't have nice things" version of linux. Command options you take for granted aren't there in AIX. Search on Unix stack exchange and there's always a more complicated "here's how you do it in AIX."

AIX pioneered technologies, like logical volume management, journaled file systems, etc. way before they were available in other Unixes. LVM existed for Solaris, but was an expensive third party add-on (Veritas Volume Manager, etc.)

It definitely had a weird feel to it though!

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#17

Post by Spooky23 »

kristopolous wrote: post #4

AIX was/is one of the few big commercial unixes I've never got to touch, is it worth it?

I really enjoyed it, although Solaris was easier as the user base was bigger.

My usage was circa 2000-2005. I loved smit and smitty, and would start new interns and juniors on AIX because the command lines to perform tasks would be generated and allow them to become productive quickly.

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#18

Post by ourmandave »

SpaceInvader wrote: post #12
ourmandave wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. AIX is the "you can't have nice things" version of linux. Command options you take for granted aren't there in AIX. Search on Unix stack exchange and there's always a more complicated "here's how you do it in AIX."

I disagree. I used to be an AIX administrator for well over a decade, got certified in basically everything related to AIX being on the side hard core FreeBSD user (still have some servers). In my opinion AIX is indeed different, but rock solid and fun to work with.

I've been since AIX v3. Moving to linux 10 years ago was like coming out of the stone ages.

But it's the same for every language. Something that's a stupid hard problem that takes a huge effort to solve is suddenly a one-liner in the next release.

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#19

Post by sys_64738 »

Maursault wrote: post #6
sys_64738 wrote: post #3

It's very interesting to think AIX was ported to such a foreign architecture as it was so deeply tied to the R/S 6000 hardware. IBM Austin is where AIX was developed in the 90s.

AIX is still developed in Austin.

Define "developed".

Re: IBM AIX for IA64 (Itanium) a.k.a. Project Monterey Runs Again

#20

Post by raverbashing »

sys_64738 wrote: post #19
Maursault wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIX is still developed in Austin.

Define "developed".

They get the maintenance money of people still running apps on there while changing/fixing one thing or another a year.
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