this is obsolete doc -- see http://doc.nethence.com/ instead

Some notes and tips on maintaining AIX systems 

Shutdown 

To restart the machine, 

shutdown -Fr

SMS utilities console 

To access the SMS utilities console, press 1 or F1 when the keyboard is being recognized. 

Note press Shift+1 on azerty keyboards (french one here). 

Checks 

Make sure the postinstall wizard is deactivated. It may still be in /etc/inittab, 

vi /etc/inittab

Check maintenance/technology level, 

oslevel -s

instfix -i | grep ML

Check for disk mirroring (software raid), 

lspv

lsvg -l rootvg

Note. PPs should be twice the amount of LPs 

Check on what device the system boots up, 

bootlist -o -m normal

Note. for example, cd0, rmt0, hdisk0, hdisk1 

Sometimes if the bootlv is outside the first 4gb of disk this can happen. It's worth to try the following. Boot into maintenance mode, mount the filesystems, type the following and reboot, 

rmlv hd5

mklv -t boot -y hd5 -a e rootvg 1 hdisk0

bosboot -ad /dev/hdisk0

shutdown -Fr

Refs. 

http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.aix/2003-04/0239.html 

http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.aix/2003-04/0260.html 

http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.aix/2003-04/0263.html 

Check for Hardware errors, 

errpt lft0

errpt > errpt.list

errpt -a > errpta.list

Note the dates, latest is at top, if I remember correctly. 

Packages 

Check packages' consistency, 

lppchk -v

Note if you get errors, do some digging e.g., THAT's JUST HINTS & EXAMPLES, 

lslpp -L all | grep cpio

lslpp -lc

lslpp -l "*cpio*"

lslpp -hc | grep cpio

lppchk -vm3

installp -pv dvices.common.cpio.rte

It may be an ODM inconsistency which may be fixed e.g., THAT's JUST HINTS & EXAMPLES, 

echo $ODMDIR

(cd /etc/obm/)

(cd /usr/lab/objx/)

(cd /etc/objrepos/)

obmget product

obmget lpp

odmget -q lpp-name="devices.common" product

odmdelete -o product -q lpp-name="nom entrée" 

(obmdelete -o product -q lppname "nom entrée") 

obmdelete -o product -q "nom entrée" 

Proceed with some updates doing, 

smit update_all

Note. if new packages are working fine, validate them (and prevent going backwards) using smit. 

Update 

To perform an update, get the fixes from http://www.ibm.com/ and, 

lppchk -v

errpt -a

smitty update_all

#shutdown -Fr

Ref. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/hw/index.jsp?topic=/iphbm/iphbm_updateall_howto.htm 

Security 

Try this command, 

aixpert

and check into security/aixpert, 

ls -l /etc/security/aixpert

Ref. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/pseries/v5r3/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.cmds/doc/aixcmds1/aixpert.htm 

Ref. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.security/doc/security/aix_sec_expert_files.htm