Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

All:

Forgive me if these are "rookie" AIX questions. I'm a 20 year IT vet, spent most of my last 10 years in the Win and Mac OS arenas. I've tinkered with various Unixes over the years, but my knowledge there is thin. My new job is my first exposure to AIX.

We are using AIX 5.3, and in particular, I am currently assigned to a maintain a single application (Arcsight for those who know).

We have a dedicated AIX enviroment just for this application (actually, it's only the backend OEM oracle database for Arcsight.)

The initial problem was that certain services were failing to run. In researching with the vendor, it appears that these services normally are installed in /etc/init.d. In my enviroment /etc/init.d is symlinkd (I believe that is the correcgt term) to /etc/rc.d/init.d .

It is here the trouble begins --- it appears there was/is no /etc/rc.d directory in this enviroment, which caused the inital installation to fail, thus causing other attempted work-arounds by the former owner of this system.

I tried to speak with the in-house AIX guru to try to understand the situation and educate myself. I was trying to ask if in a "vanilla" install of an AIX enviroment these directories would normally exist. Unfortunately, I could not get an answer from him I would consider understandable, as he dismissed the application as being a linux hack into a AIX enviroment. In his written reply he stated:

<QUOTE>

This is typical for Unix servers in the trust group (in this case it is **a different AIX enviroment**):

*13) pwd
/etc/rc.d
*13) ll
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Aug 19 2005 init.d
-r-xr--r-- 1 root system 1586 Aug 19 2005 rc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Sep 1 2005 rc2.d
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Aug 19 2005 rc3.d
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Aug 19 2005 rc4.d
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Aug 19 2005 rc5.d
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Aug 19 2005 rc6.d
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Aug 19 2005 rc7.d
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Aug 19 2005 rc8.d
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Aug 19 2005 rc9.d
*13) egrep rc.d ../inittab
l2:2:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 2
l3:3:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 3
l4:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 4
l5:5:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 5
l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 6
l7:7:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 7
l8:8:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 8
l9:9:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 9
dt:2:wait:/etc/rc.dt
dtds:2:once:/etc/rc.detectd start >/dev/null 2>&1
*13)\

The standard multi-user startup is run-level 2, so the bolded inittab is executed.

This is a very non-AIX rc method. The only active rc is rc2.d, and it only contains sshd.
</QUOTE>
(To be clear, in the above, he is referring to a different enviroment.)

I tried pressing further, but could not get much else that I could follow. I believe he was trying to communicate that (at least here), there is no such thing as a "vaniila" AIX enviroment. WHen I asked why, he responded, "Why bother?" Just copy something existing. From his comment then, I gather the enivroment was created similar to the way you would clone a virtual machine in the VMWARE world. And perhaps that enviroment was "trimmed down" or otherwise minimized for some purpose.
So I'm back to my old question, should a standard AIX enviroment have /etc/rc.d/init.d and should /etc/init.d link to it? Is my clunky explanation of how the enviroment was likely created somewhat on target?
Thanks for taking the time to respond.

David

Message was edited by: dcbarry
#AIX-Forum

Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

A default installation (in my experience) of AIX contains a /etc/rc.d/init.d directory.

There is no symlink of /etc/init.d to /etc/rc.d/init.d by default.
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Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Vungaro:

Thank for your reply.

TO clarify, in a "default" install, would there be a /etc/init.d directory at all?

Thanks again,

d.
#AIX-Forum

Originally posted by: unixgrl

My new AIX 5.2, 5.3 and 6.1 systems do not have /etc/init.d.

Several of my non-new systems do have /etc/init.d but it only contains startup scripts for 3rd party products.

So, I'd say it isn't there by default but other products may be looking for it or creating it.
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Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Unixgrl:

Thanks for the reply. Much appreciated.

Do your clean enivroments have a /etc/rc.d/init.d direcotry by default?

If you were working with a "virgin" AIX install, and you knew that an application was looking to install to /etc/init.d what would you recommend? I would prefer to keep things as much as possible as the vendor "expects" to see things to maximize compatability with future upgrades, etc?
Thanks again,

d.
#AIX-Forum

Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Sounds like a pretty tangled up (legacy) system you have there!

If you still have support then I would recommend getting the vendor to assist you in doing a re-install on a vanilla AIX system. If they state that their software can install and run on AIX then it's really up to them to make good on their promises. Getting this step done and standardising things will simply your support procedures - you should be able to RELY on IBM's AIX docs and your vendors docs to tell you how to stop/start/troubleshoot this app and any related issues.
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Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Just cleaning up. Thanks!
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