IBM-AIX Interview Questions: 1. Why is the . not included in the path? 2.

How will you mirror a volume and how will you find if a volume is mirrored ? lsvg l (vol gp name) 3. A system is echoing the ping but not able to login via telnet why ? Etc /services etc/inetd.conf 4. what is the migration path from 4.3 to 5.1 ? (or any versions) 5. A system is able to ping within the network but not outside why ? 6. What are the components of a HACMP ? (did you use serial interface) 7. What are the resource groups in HACMP? 8. What are the apar install if so for what ? 9. How will you log in or start the system in what mode if you don t know the root p assword? 10. What is ip address and subnet means ? 11. what types of san or nas devices were used ? 12. Were the storage on the hard drive or any tape used ? 13. how will you check the if a system is paging excessively ? 14. There is too much of processor utilization what could be possible reason? 15. How is paging space is allocated? 16. How will you configure sendmail ? 17. How will you assign superuser privilege to an ordinary user temporarily (sud o) 18. Based on what one will choose to use shell or perl scripting ? 19. Difference between telnet or ssh . 20. How will you truncate a log file ? 21. What is a sticky bit what is the effect on file and directory ? What is the command to view the active vg? How do u configure the Disk? Tell me Steps to configure the VG? How do u add a new disk in VG? What are the Attibutes of LVM? Describe about LVM Adva/Dis.Adv? How do u find the fix is installed? How to u extend the FS? Attributes of FS? List all the LV in system? How do u find the PP size of the VG? How do u create the pp size of 32 MB in VG? What is the Limitation of VG? How do u disable the paging space? What is LPAR?

Can you explain the steps to Mirroring rootvg in your environment? Mirroring rootvg protects the operating system from a disk failure. Mirroring rootv g requires a couple extra steps compared to other volume groups. The mirrored roo tvg disk must be bootable *and* in the bootlist. Otherwise, if the primary disk fails, you ll continue to run, but you won t be able to reboot. In brief, the procedure to mirror rootvg on hdisk0 to hdisk1 is 1. Add hdisk1 to rootvg: extendvg rootvg hdisk1 2. Mirror rootvg to hdisk1: mirrorvg rootvg hdisk1 (or smitty mirrorvg) 3. Create boot images on hdisk1: bosboot -ad /dev/hdisk1

4. Add hdisk1 to the bootlist:bootlist -m normal hdisk0 hdisk1 5. Reboot to disable quorum checking on rootvg. The mirrorvg turns off quorum by default, but the system needs to be rebooted for it to take effect. What is VPN and how it works? A VPN is a private network that uses a public network (usually the Internet) to connect remote sites or users together. Instead of using a dedicated, real-world connection such as leased line, a VPN uses virtual connections routed rough the I nternet from the company s private network to the remote site or employee. What is daemon? A daemon (pronounced DEE-muhn) is a program that runs continuously and exists fo r the purpose of handling periodic service requests that a computer system expec ts to receive. The daemon program forwards the requests to other programs (or pr ocesses) as appropriate. Each server of pages on the Web has an HTTPD or Hyperte xt Transfer Protocol daemon that continually waits for requests to come in from Web clients and their users. There are several daemon in AIX environment, such as, sshd, inetd, and so on. Can you describe SAN in your won word? A storage area network (SAN) is a high-speed special-purpose network (or subnetw ork) that interconnects different kinds of data storage devices with associated data servers on behalf of a larger network of users. Typically, a storage area n etwork is part of the overall network of computing resources for an enterprise. A storage area network is usually clustered in close proximity to other computin g resources such as IBM Power5 boxes but may also extend to remote locations for backup and archival storage, using wide area network carrier technologies such as ATM or SONET . A storage area network can use existing communication technology such as IBM s opt ical fiber ESCON or it may use the newer Fibre Channel technology. Some SAN syst em integrators liken it to the common storage bus (flow of data) in a personal c omputer that is shared by different kinds of storage devices such as a hard disk or a CD-ROM player. SANs support disk mirroring, backup and restore, archival and retrieval of archi ved data, data migration from one storage device to another, and the sharing of data among different servers in a network. SANs can incorporate subnetworks with network-attached storage (NAS) systems. So you mention NAS, but What is NAS? Network-attached storage (NAS) is hard disk storage that is set up with its own network address rather than being attached to the department computer that is se rving applications to a network s workstation users. By removing storage access an d its management from the department server, both application programming and fi les can be served faster because they are not competing for the same processor r esources. The network-attached storage device is attached to a local area networ k (typically, an Ethernet network) and assigned an IP address. File requests are mapped by the main server to the NAS file server. Network-attached storage consists of hard disk storage, including multi-disk RAI D systems, and software for configuring and mapping file locations to the networ k-attached device. Network-attached storage can be a step toward and included as

part of a more sophisticated storage system known as a storage area network (SA N). NAS software can usually handle a number of network protocols, including Microso ft s Internetwork Packet Exchange and NetBEUI, Novell s Netware Internetwork Packet Exchange, and Sun Microsystems Network File System. Configuration, including the setting of user access priorities, is usually possible using a Web browser. What is SMTP and how it works? SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a TCP/IP protocol used in sending and re ceiving e-mail. However, since it is limited in its ability to queue messages at the receiving end, it is usually used with one of two other protocols, POP3 or IMAP, that let the user save messages in a server mailbox and download them peri odically from the server. In other words, users typically use a program that use s SMTP for sending e-mail and either POP3 or IMAP for receiving e-mail. On Unixbased systems, sendmail is the most widely-used SMTP server for e-mail. A commer cial package, Sendmail, includes a POP3 server. Microsoft Exchange includes an S MTP server and can also be set up to include POP3 support. SMTP usually is implemented to operate over Internet port 25. Do you have any idea about NAT? Short for Network Address Translation, an Internet standard that enables a local -area network (LAN) to use one set of IP addresses for internal traffic and a se cond set of addresses for external traffic. A NAT box located where the LAN meet s the Internet makes all necessary IP address translations. NAT serves three main purposes: * Provides a type of firewall by hiding internal IP addresses * Enables a company to use more internal IP addresses. Since they re used inte rnally only, there s no possibility of conflict with IP addresses used by other co mpanies and organizations. * Allows a company to combine multiple ISDN connections into a single Intern et connection. Explain DHCP and its uses to an environment? Short for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a protocol for assigning dynamic IP addresses to devices on a network. With dynamic addressing, a device can have a different IP address every time it connects to the network. In some systems, the device s IP address can even change while it is still connected. DHCP also sup ports a mix of static and dynamic IP addresses. Dynamic addressing simplifies network administration because the software keeps track of IP addresses rather than requiring an administrator to manage the task. This means that a new computer can be added to a network without the hassle of manually assigning it a unique IP address. Many ISPs use dynamic IP addressing f or dial-up users. What does SNMP stands for? Short for Simple Network Management Protocol, a set of protocols for managing co mplex networks. SNMP works by sending messages, called Protocol Data Units, to d ifferent parts of a network. SNMP-compliant devices, called Agents, store data a bout themselves in Management Information Bases and return this data to the SNMP requesters.

What do you know about TCPDump? TCPdump is a common computer network debugging tool that runs under the command line. It allows the user to intercept and display TCP/IP and other packets being transmitted or received over a network to which the computer is attached. Tcpdu mp works on most Unix-like platforms: Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX and A IX among others. On Windows, WinDump can be used; it s a port of tcpdump to Window s. You must have a root or super user authority to use TCPdumps in UNIX like envrio nment. How do I remove a volume group with no disks? This is a very common question about AIX LVM and I knew that you will ask me thi s one. Within a volume group there is a Volume Group Descriptor Area (VGDA) whic h is kinda a suitcase of lvm information. This is what allows you to pick up your drives and take them to another machine, importvg them, and get filesystems aut omatically defined. What happens, when you importvg the volume group, the command goes out and reads the VGDA and finds out about all the logical volumes and filesystems that may e xist on the volume group. It then checks for clashes (name conflicts, etc..) on its own mach ine and then, populates its own database with information about the new volume g roup and its associated logical volumes. In cases of file systems, it will go into the /e tc/filesystems file and add the new filesystem entries that came along with the imported volume group. The main question I see is I ve taken away the disks, but how do I get rid of the v olume group . The question should really say, How do I get rid of the volume group INFORMATION since that s all you have on the system. You ve got possible entries in the /etc/filesystems and definitely entries in the ODM. Just do: exportvg It does a reverse importvg, except it doesn t go off and read the VGDA. It nukes a nything relating to the volume group in the /etc/filesystems and ODM. The only t ime this won t work is if the system detects that the volume group is varied on. T hen, it would be like trying to change tires on a moving car, we won t let you do it! How do you you get rid of a disk that is no longer really in the VG? In this case, you DON T want to do an exportvg. What you want to do is tell the sy stem you want to cut out the memory of the old, bad disk from the RS/6000 AND fr om the VGDA of the volume group. You simply do: reducevg -d -f or if the hdname can t be found: reducevg -d -f Be careful with this command. Unlike the exportvg command, actions done with this command WILL affect the VGDA information on the platter. What is Capacity on Demand? Capacity on Demand (CoD) encompasses the various capabilities for you to dynamic ally activate one or more resources on your server as your business peaks dictat e. You can activate inactive processors or memory units that are already install ed on your server on a temporary and permanent basis. Usually, the Capacity on Demand is used for IBM System i5 and eServer i5 and IBM S ystem p5 and eServer p5 520, 550, 570, 590, and 595 models. Some servers include

a number of active and inactive resources. Active processors and active memory u nits are resources that are available for use on your server when it comes from the manufacturer. Inactive processors and inactive memory units are resources th at are included with your server but are not available for use until you activat e them. What is Hardware Management Console (HMC)? The HMC is a server or stand alone machine that provides a graphical user interf ace tool to manage several Power Systems. The HMC manages system through hypervi sor and operating system. From version 7 it is truly web based and you can confi gure, installs and manage, partitioned, virtualization most of your Power5 and 6 boxes via HMC. There are many tasks you can do with HMC, such as, * * * * * orage * * Powering off and on of the partition Configure and activate resources to the system Creates and stores LPAR profiles and allocated resources to them. HMC do the dynamic memory reconfiguration of the partition. Setup VIO server and VIO client thru HMC and do micro-partition, create st pool and processor pool with it Provide virtual console to the partition

Most of the time we installed dual HMC for redundancy and make sure to achieve m ore uptime in a wide system Why do I need a Hardware Management Console, anyway? You need a HMC if you plan to: Configure and manage logical can configure LINUX partitions Perform DLPAR (dynamic LPAR) Activate and manage Capacity partitions and partition profiles (selected models without a HMC). functions. on Demand resources.

You can also use the HMC to: Perform service functions Manage frames (towers), IOPs and IOAs. * Note that you cannot see below the IOA to the device level. Manage system profiles (yes, you can have more than one!) Power on and power down. The Service Processor is always hot if there is power t o the server. Activate and manage Virtualization Engine technologies. 5250 emulation so you can get a console up on a i5/OS partition or a virtual ter minal window for AIX or LINUX. What is kernel? The kernel is the essential center of a computer operating system, the core that provides basic services for all other parts of the operating system. A synonym is nucleus. A kernel can be contrasted with a shell, the outermost part of an op erating system that interacts with user commands. Kernel and shell are terms use d more frequently in UNIX operating systems than in IBM mainframe or Microsoft W indows systems. Typically, a kernel (or any comparable center of an operating system) includes a n interrupt handler that handles all requests or completed I/O operations that c ompete for the kernel s services, a scheduler that determines which programs share the kernel s processing time in what order, and a supervisor that actually gives use of the computer to each process when it is scheduled. A kernel may also incl

ude a manager of the operating system s address spaces in memory or storage, shari ng these among all components and other users of the kernel s services. A kernel s s ervices are requested by other parts of the operating system or by application p rograms through a specified set of program interfaces sometimes known as system calls. What is RMC? The Resource Monitoring and Control (RMC) subsystem is the scalable backbone of RSCT that provides a generalized framework for managing resources within a singl e system or a cluster. Its generalized framework is used by cluster management t ools to monitor, query, modify, and control cluster resources. RMC provides a si ngle monitoring and management infrastructure for both RSCT peer domains and man agement domains. RMC can also be used on a single machine, enabling you to monit or and manage the resources of that machine. However, when a group of machines, each running RMC, are clustered together, the RMC framework allows a process on any node to perform an operation on one or more resources on any other node in t he domain. What information is stored in Object Data Manager? It is a database of system and device configuration information integrated into IBM s AIX operating system. The ODM is unique to AIX compared to other UNIX operat ing systems. Example of information stored in the ODM database are: * * * * * * * Network configuration Logical volume management configuration Installed software information Devices that AIX has drivers for Logical devices or software drivers Physical hardware device installed Menus, screens and commands that SMIT uses

Explain a little about Vital Product Data (VPD)? VPD in AIX and Linux is a collection of configuration and informational data ass ociated with a particular set of hardware or software. VPD refers to a subset of database tables in the Object Data Manager (ODM), Therefore the VPD and ODM ter ms are sometimes referred to interchangeably. Vital product data (VPD) stores information such as part numbers, serial numbers , and engineering change levels from the Customized VPD object class or platform specific areas, not all devices contain VPD data. Does HACMP work on different operating systems? Yes. HACMP is tightly integrated with the AIX 5L operating system and System p s ervers allowing for a rich set of features which are not available with any othe r combination of operating system and hardware. HACMP V5 introduces support for the Linux operating system on POWER servers. HACMP for Linux supports a subset o f the features available on AIX 5L, however this mutli-platform support provides a common availability infrastructure for your entire enterprise. What applications work with HACMP? All popular applications work with HACMP including DB2, Oracle, SAP, WebSphere, etc. HACMP provides Smart Assist agents to let you quickly and easily configure HACMP with specific applications. HACMP includes flexible configuration paramete rs that let you easily set it up for just about any application there is.

Does HACMP support dynamic LPAR, CUoD, On/Off CoD, or CBU? HACMP supports Dynamic Logical Partitioning, Capacity Upgrade on Demand, On/Off Capacity on Demand and Capacity Backup Upgrade. If a server has LPAR capability, can two or more LPARs be configured with unique instances of HACMP running on them without incurring additional license charges ? Yes. HACMP is a server product that has one charge unit: number of processors on which HACMP will be installed or run. Regardless of how many LPARs or instances of AIX 5L that run in the server, you are charged based on the number of active processors in the server that is running HACMP. Note that HACMP configurations containing multiple LPARs within a single server may represent a potential singl e point-of-failure. To avoid this, it is recommended that the backup for an LPAR be an LPAR on a different server or a standalone server. Does HACMP support non-IBM hardware or operating systems? Yes. HACMP for AIX 5L supports the hardware and operating systems as specified i n the manual where HACMP V5.4 includes support for Red Hat and SUSE Linux. What is nmon tool do? The nmon tool is designed for AIX and Linux performance specialists to use for m onitoring and analyzing performance data, including: * CPU utilization * Memory use * Kernel statistics and run queue information * Disks I/O rates, transfers, and read/write ratios * Free space on file systems * Disk adapters * Network I/O rates, transfers, and read/write ratios * Paging space and paging rates * CPU and AIX specification * Top processors * IBM HTTP Web cache * User-defined disk groups * Machine details and resources * Asynchronous I/O AIX only * Workload Manager (WLM) AIX only * IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) disks AIX only * Network File System (NFS) * Dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) changes only pSeries p5 and OpenPower for either AIX or Linux Also included is a new tool to generate graphs from the nmon output and create . gif files that can be displayed on a Web site. What is Logical Volume Manager(LVM) means? The set of operating system commands, library subroutines and other tools that a llow you to establish and control logical volume storage is called the Logical V olume Manager (LVM). What is a Logical partition? A logical partition (LPAR) is the division of a computer s processors, memory, and hardware resources into multiple environments so that each environment can be o perated independently with its own operating system and applications.

Explain Network File Systems(NFS)? The Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system that allows users to access files and directories of remote servers as if they were local. Suppose, Server A, that makes its file systems, directories, and other resources availabl e for remote access. Client s computers, or their processes, that use a server s res ources. Export the act of making file systems available to remote clients. Mount the act of a client accessing the file systems that a server exports. What is Network Information Service (NIS)? NIS was developed to simplify the task of administrating a number of machines ov er a network. In particular was the requirement to maintain copies of common fil es (e.g. password, group and host) across different systems. What is software RAID Levels do? Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) is formally defined as a method to store data on any type of disk medium. LDAP The Light Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) defines a standard method for accessi ng and updating information in a directory (a database) either locally or remote ly in a client-server model. tags: AIX, Answers, Interview, Questions AIX commands and tools for DB2 troubleshooting newer older Setting Defaults of a variable 1 Response to "AIX Interview Questions and Answers". Add a comment? or Follow co mments by RSS? 1. Pingback by AIX Interview Questions and Answers : Job finding tips, interview questions and tips, Resume & Cover Letter Samples 9/Jun/2010 at 11:16 pm [...] on | June 10, 2010 | No Comments Click here. AIX Interview Questions and A nswers Category: Technical Interview Questions and [...]

* Home * Archive for the AIX Interview Questions & Answers Category. AIX commands and tools for DB2 troubleshooting November 12, 2009, 9:52 PM Why it is here ..

Though this site is for interview and questions related posting, but my recent w eb surfing experiences stuck my eye on an excellent 'how to' which forced me to post this article here. I hope our readers will get help from this post too. Enj oy .. Introduction

There are many scenarios where the troubleshooting of DB2 issues can involve and benefit from gathering operating system level data and analyzing it to understa nd the issues further. This article discusses a number of problems you may face with your database incl uding CPU usage problems, orphan processes, database corruption, memory leaks, h angs and unresponsive application. Here the author tried to explain some AIX utilities and commands to help you und erstand and resolve each of these troublesome issues. The data you collect from running these commands can be sent to the IBM Technical Support Team when openin g a problem management request (PMR) in order to expedite the PMR support proces s. The end of each section of this article discusses the documents you should ga ther to send to the Technical Support Team. While this article gives troubleshoo ting tips to use as a guideline, you should contact the IBM Technical Support Te am for official advice about these problems. Monitor CPU usage In working with your database, you might notice a certain DB2 process consuming a high amount of CPU space. This section describes some AIX utilities and comman ds which you can use either to analyse the issue yourself or to gather data befo re submitting a PMR to IBM Technical Support: Through ps Command: A ps command reveals the current status of an active process. You can use ps -auxw | sort r +3 |head 10 to sort and get a list of the top 10 highest CPU consuming processes. Listing 1 shows the ps output: Listing 1. Sample ps output

root@mavrickit $ ps auxw|sort -r +3|head -10 USER scot dpf scot dpf dpf dpf dpf dpf PID %CPU %MEM SZ RSS TTY STAT STIME TIME COMMAND

1658958 0.1 9.0 218016 214804 - A 1036486 0.0 1.0 14376 14068 1822932 0.0 1.0 12196 11608 1011760 0.0 0.0 9264 9060 1532116 0.0 0.0 9264 9020 786672 0.0 0.0 9264 8984 1077470 0.0 0.0 9264 8968 1269798 0.0 0.0 9248 9044 - A - A - A - A - A - A - A - A

Sep 13 38:16 db2agent (idle) 0 Sep 17 3:10 db2hmon 0 Sep 12 6:41 db2hmon 0 Sep 17 3:03 db2hmon 3 Sep 17 3:04 db2hmon 2 Sep 17 3:02 db2hmon 5 Sep 17 3:03 db2hmon 1 Sep 17 2:50 db2hmon 4 Jul 19 0:52 db2sysc 0

db2inst1 454756 0.0 0.0 9012 7120

Through topas Command When executing a ps -ef command, you see the CPU usage of a certain process. You can also use the topas command to get further details. Similar to the ps comman d, a topas command retrieves selected statistics about the activity on the local system. Listing 2 is a sample topas output that shows a DB2 process consuming 3 3.3% CPU. You can use the topas output to get specific information such as the p rocess id, the CPU usage and the instance owner who started the process. It is n ormal to see several db2sysc processes for a single instance owner. DB2 processe s are renamed depending on the utility being used to list process information: Listing 2. Sample topas output

Name db2sysc db2sysc test db2sysc db2sysc db2sysc sharon lrud db2sysc db2sysc topas db2sysc db2sysc db2sysc

PID

CPU% PgSp Owner

105428 33.3 11.7 udbtest 38994 14.0 11.9 udbtest 14480 36348 116978 120548 30318 9030 130252 130936 120598 62248 83970 113870 1.4 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.0 root 1.6 udbtest 1.6 udbtest 1.5 udbtest 0.5 root 0.0 root 1.6 udbtest 1.6 udbtest 3.0 udbtest 1.6 udbtest 1.6 udbtest 1.7 root

Through vmstat Command The vmstat command can be used to monitor CPU utilization; you can get details o n the amount of user CPU utilization as well as system CPU usage. Listing 3 show s the output from a vmstat command: Listing 3. Sample vmstat output

kthr

memory

page

faults

cpu

----- ----------- ------------------------ ------------ ----------r b avm fre re pi po fr sr cy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 in sy cs us sy id 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 wa 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

32 3 1673185 44373 0 0 0 24 0 1673442 44296 0 0 0 30 3 1678417 39478 0 0 0 33 1 1677126 40816 0 0 0 28 0 1678606 39183 0 0 0 35 1 1676959 40793 0 0 0 23 0 1671318 46504 0 0 0 30 0 1677740 40178 0 0 0 30 1 1683402 34425 0 0 0 0 0 1684160 33808 0 0 0

0 4009 60051 9744 62 38 0 4237 63775 9214 67 33 0 3955 70833 8457 69 31 0 4101 68745 8336 68 31 0 4525 75183 8708 63 37 0 4085 70195 9271 72 28

0 4780 68416 9360 64 36 0 4326 58747 9201 66 34 0 4419 76528 10042 60 40 0 4186 72187 9661 73 27

When reading a vmstat output, as above, you can ignore the first line. The impor tant columns to look at are us, sy, id and wa. Whereas id: wa: us: sy: Time Time Time Time spent spent spent spent idle. waiting for I/O. running non-kernel code. (user time) running kernel code. (system time)

In Listing 3, the system is hitting an average of 65% user CPU usage and 35% sys tem CPU usage. Pi and Po values are equal to 0, thus there are no paging issues. The wa column shows there does not seem to be any I/O issues. Listing 4 shows the wa (waiting on I/O) to be unusually high and this indicates there might be I/O bottlenecks on the system which in turn causes the CPU usage to be inefficient. You can check errpt -a output to see if there are any reporte d issues with the media or I/O on the system. Listing 4. Sample vmstat output showing I/O issues

Kthr

memory

page

faults

cpu

----- ----------- ------------------------ ------------ ----------r b avm fre re pi po fr 0 0 0 0 929 0 0 376 sr 1689 0 0 656 cy 0 0 0 0 in sy cs us sy id wa 3 76 16 2 0 98 1 0 99 2 0 97

2 8 495803 3344 0 0 0 30 495807 3340 0 0 0 30 495807 3340 0 0 0 30 495807 3676 0 2

998 6066 1832 4 1093 4697 1326 0 1055 2291 1289 0 1128 6803 2210 1

0 29 495807 3292 0 1 1 29 495810 3226 0 1 4 24 495810 3247 0 3 4 25 495810 3247 0 0 2 26 495810 3262 0 2 3 22 495810 3245 0 1 Through iostat Command

3 0 0 0 0 0

2266 5427 6830 3969 5558 4084

3219 7572 10018 6752 9587 7547

0 0 0 0 0 0

1921 8089 2528 14 4 0 82 3175 16788 4257 37 11 0 52 2483 10691 2498 40 7 0 53 1900 14037 1960 33 5 1 61 2162 10629 2695 50 8 0 42 1894 10866 1970 53 17 0 30

An iostat command quickly tells you if your system has a disk I/O-bound performa nce problem. Listing 5 is an example of an iostat command output: Listing 5. Sample iostat output

System configuration: lcpu=4 disk=331 tty: 0.0 tin 724.0 tout avg-cpu: 17.9 % user 12.3 % sys 0.0 % idle 69.7 % iowait

Disks: hdisk119 hdisk115 hdiskpower26

% tm_act 100.0 100.0 100.0

Kbps 5159.2 5129.6 10288.8

tps

Kb_read Kb_wrtn 394.4 393.0 790.8 1560 1656 3216 24236 23992 48228

%tm_act : Reports back the percentage of time that the physical disk was active or the total time of disk requests. Kbps : Reports back the amount of data transferred to the drive in kilobytes. tps : Reports back the number of transfers-per-second issued to the physical dis k. Kb_read : Reports back the total data (kilobytes) from your measured interval th at is read from the physical volumes. Kb_wrtn : Reports back the amount of data (kilobytes) from your measured interva l that is written to the physical volumes. To check if you are experiencing resource contention, you can focus on the %tm_a ct value from the above output. An increase in this value, especially more than 40%, implies that processes are waiting for I/O to complete, and you have an I/O issue on your hands. Checking which hard disk has higher disk activity percenta ge and whether DB2 uses those hard disks gives you a better idea if these two fa ctors are related.

What to collect You should collect the following information before opening a PMR with IBM Techn ical Support: * db2support.zip * of high cpu process * of high cpu process Technical support might also send you the db2service.perf1 script which basicall y collects data repeatedly over a period of time. The output of the script needs to be bundled and sent back to the support team for their further analysis. Troubleshoot orphan processes There are scenarios when, even after doing a db2stop, you notice (by doing a ps -ef | grep DB2) certain DB2 processes such as the db2fmp process still running a nd consuming resources. If there was a case of abnormal shutdown, it is advised to do a ipclean after the instance has been stopped. Doing a db2stop should inhe rently shutdown all DB2 related processes; however, if an application using thos e processes was abnormally terminated, this might cause related DB2 processes to become orphan processes. Orphan DB2 processes are those which are not attached or linked to any other DB2 processes. Abnormal termination of an application includes shutting it down by doing a Ctrl+C, closing the KSH session or killing it with a -9 option. One way of confirming that the process is orphaned, is to try and match the proc ess ID (PID) of the orphaned process from the ps -ef output with the Coordinator column of the db2 list applications show detail output. If the PID cannot be fo und in the db2 list apps output, then it is an orphan process. For example, if y ou issue a db2 list applications show detail command, you get this output: Listing 6. Sample list applications output CONNECT Auth Id Application Name Appl. Application Id Seq# Number of Coordinatin g DB Coordinator Status Status Change Time DB Name DB Path Handle Agents partition number pid/thread

JDE test.exe 2079 AC1C5C38.G80D.011F44162421 0001 1 0 2068646 UOW Waiting 04/04/2006 09:25:17.036230 PTPROD /db2pd/otprod/ptprod/otprod/NODE0000/SQL00001/

--NOTICE PID 2068646. This is the PID on the local server.

Part of the ps -ef output from the server:

ps -ef |grep 2068646 otprod 2068646 483566 0 09:06:28 - 0:59 db2agent (PTPROD) 0 This output shows the process with PID of 2068646 is not an orphaned process and is still attached to a DB2 process. In order l, clean s on the ult, and to avoid orphan processes, you may want to do exits at the client side so that DB2 is aware server. Tweak values of TCPKEEPIDLE time to a tune the DB2CHECKCLIENTINTERVAL and KEEPALIVE the following: Make norma and can clean up resource number less than the defa values.

What to collect If you do notice orphan processes and wish to investigate this issue, you should collect the following information before opening a PMR with IBM Technical Suppo rt: - grep db2 output -db2support.zip with -c option - A callstack of the process that is collected using dbx, db2pd -stack or kill 36 <pid>. The dbx command is a popular command line debugger used in both Solari s and AIX systems. The dbx output is helpful and can be run as follows: Listing 7. The dbx command

dbx -a <PID> At the dbx prompt type th --- Displays all threads for the process

th info --- Displays additional info about the threads where --- Get stack trace for thread 1

th current 1 --- Makes t1 current where --- Displays stack for thread 1

th current 2 --- Makes thread 2 current where --- Displays stack for thread 2.

... continue for all threads of the process detach --- Detach from process

dbx -a <PID of orphan process> Detect database corruption

You can start to investigate whether the database is corrupted if a user complai ns of not being able to access certain database objects or is unable to connect to a specific database partition. The following section highlights some of the e rrors that are logged by DB2 and how you can ensure that there are no operating system (OS) level issues affecting or causing DB2 database corruption. You might notice errors similar to the one in Listing 8 being logged in the db2diag.log: Listing 8. Corruption errors

RETCODE : ZRC=0x87040001=-2029780991=SQLD_BADPAGE "Bad Data Page" DIA8500C A data file error has occurred, record id is "".

Or RETCODE: ZRC=0x86020019=-2046689255=SQLB_CSUM "Bad Page, Checksum Error" DIA8426C A invalid page checksum was found for page "".

Or 2007-07-09-11.29.45.696176+120 I16992C16377 LEVEL: Severe PID : 68098 TID : 1 PROC : db2agent (sample) INSTANCE: instest NODE : 000 DB : sample APPHDL : 0-635 APPID: *LOCAL.instest.070709082609 FUNCTION: DB2 UDB, buffer pool services, sqlbcres, probe:20 MESSAGE : Important: CBIT Error DATA #1 : Hexdump, 4096 bytes

These errors are logged when DB2 tries to access data in a container and there i s some form of corruption. In such an instance when DB2 cannot access the data, the database might be marked as bad. You can narrow down where there might be po ssible corruption. In the db2diag.log, look for messages similar to the followin g: Listing 9. Corruption errors showing database object details 2006-04-15-03.15.37.271601-360 I235258C487 LEVEL: Error PID : 152482 TID : 1 PROC : db2reorg (SAMPLE) 0 INSTANCE: instest NODE : 000 DB : SAMPLE APPHDL : 0-68 APPID: *LOCAL.SAMPLE.060415091532

FUNCTION: DB2 UDB, buffer pool services, sqlbrdpg, probe:1146 DATA #1 : String, 124 bytes Obj={pool:5;obj:517;type:0} State=x27 Parent={5;517}, EM=55456, PP0=55488 Page=55520 Cont=0 Offset=55552 BlkSize=12 BadPage The above errors indicate corruption has occurred in tablespace:5 and tableid:51 7. To check which table this refers to, execute the following SQL query: Listing 10. Query to find a table with corruption db2 "select tabname, tbspace from syscat.tables where tbspaceid = 5 and tableid = 517" On the Operating System (OS) level, the most common causes for corruption are ei ther hardware issues or file system corruption. For example, in the db2diag.log if you see the database being marked damaged with a ECORRUPT (89) error as follo ws : Listing 11. Sample file system-related corruption errors 2007-05-22-13.45.52.268785-240 E20501C453 LEVEL: Error (OS) PID : 1646696 TID : 1 PROC : db2agent (SAMPLE) 0 INSTANCE: tprod NODE : 000 DB : SAMPLE APPHDL : 0-32 APPID: GA260B45.M505.012BC2174219 FUNCTION: DB2 UDB, oper system services, sqloopenp, probe:80 CALLED : OS, -, unspecified_system_function OSERR : ECORRUPT (89) "Invalid file system control data detected."

You can check the following Review the errpt -a output and look for hardware I/O or disk-related messages. L isting 12 is an example of an errpt -a output which shows a file system corrupti on: Listing 12. Sample errpt output LABEL: J2_FSCK_REQUIRED IDENTIFIER: B6DB68E0 Date/Time: Thu Jun 7 20:59:49 DFT 2007 Sequence Number: 139206 Machine Id: 000BA256D600

Node Id: cmab Class: O Type: INFO Resource Name: SYSJ2 Description FILE SYSTEM RECOVERY REQUIRED Probable Causes INVALID FILE SYSTEM CONTROL DATA DETECTED Recommended Actions PERFORM FULL FILE SYSTEM RECOVERY USING FSCK UTILITY OBTAIN DUMP CHECK ERROR LOG FOR ADDITIONAL RELATED ENTRIES Detail Data ERROR CODE 0000 0005 JFS2 MAJOR/MINOR DEVICE NUMBER 0032 0004 CALLER 0028 8EC8 CALLER 0025 D5E4 CALLER 002B 4AC8

2. Run the fsck command on the file system where the container resides to be sur e that it is sound. fsck interactively checks and repairs any file system malfun ction. From the pSeries and AIX Information Center we can find the following exa mples of using the fsck command. Listing 13. The fsck command

To check all the default file systems enter: fsck This form of the fsck command asks you for permission before making any changes to a file system.

To check the file system /dev/hd1, enter: fsck /dev/hd1 This checks the unmounted file system located on the /dev/hd1 device.

What to collect You should collect the following information before opening a PMR with IBM Techn ical Support: 1. errpt -a 2. db2support.zip 3. fsck results Debug memory leaks It is important to distinguish, if possible, between a memory leak and a systemwide performance degradation due to increased demands for memory. So initially i t is pertinent to check that nothing has changed in the environment that could e xplain increased memory usage. The rest of this section discusses how to use AIX Operating System techniques to spot, track and debug those leaks. The article d oes not discuss detailed DB2 tools and techniques, although there is some mentio n where necessary. What is a memory leak? A particular kind of unintentional memory consumption by a computer program wher e the program fails to release memory when no longer needed. This condition is n ormally the result of a bug in a program that prevents it from freeing up memory that it no longer needs. The term is meant as a humorous misnomer, since memory is not physically lost from the computer. Rather, memory is allocated to a prog ram, and that program subsequently loses the ability to access it due to program logic flaws. Specifically, it is a bug in the code whereby malloc() memory allocation calls a re not met by corresponding free() memory calls. No corresponding free() system calls lead to unfreed blocks. Typically this is a slow process and occurs over d ays or weeks particularly if the process is left active as is often the case. So me leaks are not even detectable, particularly if the application terminates and its processes are destroyed. Lisitng 14 is an example of a C code snippet that demonstrates memory leak. In t his instance, memory was available and pointed to by the variable 's,' but it wa s not saved. After this function returns, the pointer is destroyed and the alloc ated memory becomes unreachable, but it remains allocated.

Listing 14. Sample c code

#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> void f(void) { void* s; s = malloc(50); /* get memory */ return; /* * Memory was available and pointed to by s, but not saved. * After this function returns, the pointer is destroyed, * and the allocated memory becomes unreachable. * * To "fix" this code, either the f() function itself * needs to add "free(s)" somewhere or the s needs * to be returned from the f() and the caller of f() needs * to do the free(). */ } int main(void) { /* this is an infinite loop calling the above function */ while (1) f(); /* Malloc will return NULL sooner or later, due to lack of m emory */ return 0; } /* memory leak - see note below */

How to spot, track and debug memory leaks To begin with, you should call IBM if you suspect a DB2 process is leaking memor y. But how do you know that you are experiencing this situation? This section di scusses some of the options.

The first option is to use the ps utility. The ps utility can be used to quickly and simply determine if a process is leaking. This example demonstrates how a p articular process is growing in size: Listing 15. Sample 'ps aux' output showing the process growing in size

ps aux:

1st iteration: USER COMMAND db2inst1 225284 0.2 0.0 19468 18280 db2logmgr - A 11:26:06 10:34 PID %CPU %MEM SZ RSS TTY STAT STIME TIME

2nd iteration: db2inst1 225284 0.1 0.0 19696 18512 db2logmgr - A 11:26:06 10:34

3rd iteration: db2inst1 225284 0.1 0.0 19908 18724 db2logmgr - A 11:26:06 10:36

4th iteration: db2inst1 225284 0.1 0.0 20116 18932 db2logmgr - A 11:26:06 10:36

5th iteration: db2inst1 225284 0.1 0.0 20312 19128 db2logmgr - A 11:26:06 10:37

ps -kelf:

1st iteration: F S STIME UID PID PPID C PRI NI ADDR SZ WCHAN

TTY TIME CMD 0 60 20 580e59400 18466

40001 A db2inst1 225284 254158 11:26:06

- 10:34 db2logmgr (***) 0

2nd iteration: 40001 A db2inst1 225284 254158 11:26:06 1 60 20 580e59400 18696

- 10:34 db2logmgr (***) 0

3rd iteration: 40001 A db2inst1 225284 254158 11:26:06 0 60 20 580e59400 18900

- 10:36 db2logmgr (***) 0

4th iteration: 40001 A db2inst1 225284 254158 11:26:06 0 60 20 580e59400 20106

- 10:36 db2logmgr (***) 0

5th iteration: 40001 A db2inst1 225284 254158 11:26:06 0 60 20 580e59400 20312

- 10:37 db2logmgr (***) 0

The SZ and RSS values in the ps aux output are the 2 key columns to focus on whe n trying to spot a potential memory leak. As you can see, the values in bold are increasing. It is not sufficient, however, to determine root cause and more deb ugging is certainly required. Again, please raise this issue with IBM Technical Support, but what follows are some likely problem determination steps IBM will t ake. Debug using procmap and gencore As root: 1. procmap <db2logmgr pid>> procmap.1

2. ps aux > ps_aux.1 3. ps -kelf > ps_kelf.1 4. gencore <db2logmgr pid> <file> procmap <db2logmgr pid> > procmap.2 1. ps aux > ps_aux.2 2. ps -kelf > ps_kelf.2 3. gencore <db2logmgr pid> < file>

and sleep for a period of time, then

Then repeat these steps again for another 2 or 3 iterations. Please note, on 64 bit AIX, the gencore creates very large files. Regardless of the word size, full core needs to be enabled. The following commands can be used to check that the e nvironment is set up correctly: Listing 16. The lsattr command

lsattr -El sys0| grep -i core fullcore True true Enable full CORE dump

And the limits for the instance owner needs to be set appropriately too. You may well be asked to enable MALLOC_DEBUG and export this to the DB2 environment. Wh at follows is an example of this: To start DB2 memory debugging for the next time the instance is started, run: db 2set DB2MEMDBG=FFDC . > To start malloc debugging for the next time the instance is started, run: expo rt MALLOCDEBUG log:extended stack_depth 12. And append MALLOCDEBUG to the DB2 registry variable DB2ENVLIST: > db2set DB2ENVLIST MALLOCDEBUG. Then stop and restart DB2. Once the core files have been created, you can use snapcore to bundle the core f iles and libraries into pax file. An example of snapcore is as follows: Listing 17. Sample snapcore

snapcore /home/db2inst1/sqllib/db2dump/c123456/core /home/db2inst1/sqllib/adm/db2sysc This creates a file with file is useless without not db2logmgr, which was ecutable. DB2 support is oc() allocations against Recover from hangs a *.pax extension in /tmp/snapcore by default. The core the executable that cored, in this case it was db2sysc seen to be growing, because that is a process not an ex then able to interrogate the core to track the DB2 mall free() calls.

What is a hang A hang occurs when a process has not moved forward or changed after a period of time. This can happen if a thread or process reaches a point in its execution wh ere it can go no further and is waiting for a response. It also occurs when the process is in a very tight loop and never completes the function. The first step is to identify if what you are experiencing is a hang or a severe degradation. Then you need to understand what is affected, or the scope. Some s imple questions can help a lot: * * * * Why Are How How do you think it has hung? all DB2 commands hanging? long has the command been running for? long does it normally run for

Then to access the scope: * Are OS commands hanging too? If the answer to this is yes, then you need g et assistance from the AIX support team. * Are db2 connect statements affected? * Can SQL be issued over existing connections? * If in a DPF environment, can you issue commands against other partitions? * Can you issue commands against other databases? Recovery Remember, please collect the stacks before you recover. Once you have the stacks the only choice you have is to issue db2_kill. Then check for any processes and IPCs shared memory, message queues and semaphores left lying around after the k ill. You may have to remove any you find manually. You could also try ipclean to remove these resources. If the IPCs are not cleared out by ipclean or ipcrm and the processes are removed by kill -9, then the process is most likely hung in t he kernel and you need to call AIX support. Once it has come down, restart with db2start and then do a restart db command. What to collect The single most important piece of information to collect is a stack trace of th e process that is believed to be hung. IBM DB2 support cannot debug a hang witho ut this, and the stack trace must be collected prior to recovering DB2. If this is not done, you may have another outage in the future. There will be pressure to restart DB2, but you must resist. The system must be i n a hung state in order to diagnose the root cause of the problem and do the nec essary debugging. A restart clears the situation and you have lost the window of opportunity to make the necessary changes. More seriously, you cannot provide a ny confidence that it won't recur. Thus, you need to resist the pressure to rest art DB2 until you have collected all the diagnostics. The following table describes good probelm determination (PD) and data caputre v ersus bad PD and data capture. Note that the best PD and data caputre requires t he fewest steps and has a better change of success in determining root cause. Poor PD and data capture: * Occurrence * Detection * Recovery

* FFDC on (requires restart) * Restart (outage #2) Schedule outage, hopefully problem does not reoccur be fore * * * * * Occurrence (outage #3) Detection Data Collection Recovery Diagnosis (clock ticking)

Better PD and data capture: * * * * * * * * * Occurrence (outage #1) Detection Recovery FFDC on Occurrence (outage #2) Detection Data Collection Recovery Diagnosis (clock ticking)

Good PD and data capture: * * * * * Occurrence (outage #1) Detection Data Collection Recovery Diagnosis (clock ticking)

Stack traces A stack trace is a snapshot of the function calls at a particular point in time. So multiple stack traces, a few minutes apart, provide a sense of motion. There are a variety of ways to collect stack traces; the following lists are, in my o pinion, the most reliable: Procstack <pid of hung process> >> pid.pstack.out This is an AIX utility that just dumps the stack to a file. In this instance, I am appending the file because it is run again later and I do not want to have to re-write it. Kill -36 <pid> This command does not kill the process, but it sends a signal to dump its stack. This actually creates a fully-formatted trap file to the DIAGPATH area of DB2. Because it gives more information than procstack and the way it works internally , it is generally more expensive, particularly if there are hundreds of processe s, which is often the case. The main focus of this article is to discuss AIX ope rating system tools to debug DB2. No discussion of hang problem determination is complete without mentioning db2pd, so the following invocations can be used to generate stacks traces: db2pd -stacks (This generates stack dumps again all PID) db2pd -stack <pid> (This generates a stack dump for the PID specified) The trap file is created in the DIAGPATH area. Listing 18 shows an example of it s usage: Listing 18. db2pd -stacks usage

1. -stacks $ db2pd -stacks Attempting to dump all stack traces for instance. See current DIAGPATH for trapfiles. 2. -stack <pid> $ db2pd -stack 1454326 Attempting to dump stack trace for pid 1454326. See current DIAGPATH for trapfile. The DB2 support will ask you to tar and compress the DIAGPATH area. Most commonl y they will ask you to run a db2support command which does it for you, providing the correct flags are used. However, if you use the OS method of procstack, you have to submit the output files. Truss The truss command can be used but is not as effective as a stack dump and is onl y likely to reveal anything if the processes is looping and can be reproduced. I f the process is hung, only a stack dump can reveal how it got there. ps It is also a good idea to collect ps listings for all partitions, if applicable, before and after the stack dumps. If you collect the data manually the pseudo-c ode looks like this: Listing 19. procstack Procstack Pid or PIDs >> procstack.out Ps eafl >> pseafl.out Ps aux >> psaux.out Sleep 120 Repeat for at least 3 iterations. Or: Kill -36 <pid> or PIDs Ps eafl >> pseafl.out Ps aux >> psaux.out Sleep 120 Repeat for at least 3 iterations. NB: IBM DB2 support can provide a data collect script which automates this proce ss.

Investigate unresponsive applications Sometimes applications are merely unresponsive, and you have t is unresponsive and how to get it to respond. If you issue and it does not respond, you may be left wondering what you l, it is important to know that force makes no guarantees to a wrapper around an OS kill command. to figure out why i a force application can do. First of al force. It is simply

Without going into the architectural details of DB2, there are some situations w hich are dangerous to force. As such, the db2agent sets its priority level to be higher than that of the force. Under these circumstances, force does not work, and this is by design. The bottom line is, not every unresponsive application is caused by a bug. It is possible that the application is just doing something important and not respond ing to any additional commands until it completes its current task. Recovery Recovery almost certainly requires a db2stop,db2start as DB2 does not take kindl y to key engine processes being killed. It tends to invoke panic and bring the i nstance down. I would asses the impact the rogue application is having and, if p ossible, leave it in situ until you can recycle. It may be holding locks that ar e contending with other users, for example, and this is adversely affecting the application, in which case you may have to take an outage to remove it.

What to collect The debugging of an unresponsive application is treated in the same way as a hun g, but clearly the scope is narrower. You need to collect the following elements to send to IBM Technical Support: - Iterative stack traces of the db2agent or DB2 process that is unresponsive. - ps listings and other items, like: db2level, dbm cfg, db cfg, db2diag.log and possibly an application snapshot. Conclusion Problem determination in DB2 is made simpler because of the tools and utilities available in AIX. Often it is necessary to use both AIX and DB2 tools and comman ds to figure out what the problem is. This article discusses some of the problem s associated with troubleshooting in DB2 and has hopefully given you the tools y ou need to fix your database. JOB INTEVIEW QUESTIONS Category: AIX Interview Questions & Answers, DB2 Interview Questions, Database I nterview Questions, Unix Interview Questions | Comment AIX Interview Questions and Answers November 12, 2009, 5:36 PM I collected some useful interview questions from various sites and I thought the se questions might help our readers or job seekers to strength their knowledge. Most of the questions are AIX, HACMP, Network related. Enjoy.

Can you explain the steps to Mirroring rootvg in your environment? Mirroring "rootvg" protects the operating system from a disk failure. Mirroring "rootvg" requires a couple extra steps compared to other volume groups. The mirr ored rootvg disk must be bootable *and* in the bootlist. Otherwise, if the prima ry disk fails, you'll continue to run, but you won't be able to reboot. In brief, the procedure to mirror rootvg on hdisk0 to hdisk1 is 1. Add hdisk1 to rootvg: extendvg rootvg hdisk1 2. Mirror rootvg to hdisk1: mirrorvg rootvg hdisk1 (or smitty mirrorvg) 3. Create boot images on hdisk1: bosboot -ad /dev/hdisk1 4. Add hdisk1 to the bootlist:bootlist -m normal hdisk0 hdisk1 5. Reboot to disable quorum checking on rootvg. The mirrorvg turns off quorum by default, but the system needs to be rebooted for it to take effect. What is VPN and how it works? A VPN is a private network that uses a public network (usually the Internet) to connect remote sites or users together. Instead of using a dedicated, real-world connection such as leased line, a VPN uses "virtual" connections routed rough t he Internet from the company's private network to the remote site or employee. What is daemon? A daemon (pronounced DEE-muhn) is a program that runs continuously and exists fo r the purpose of handling periodic service requests that a computer system expec ts to receive. The daemon program forwards the requests to other programs (or pr ocesses) as appropriate. Each server of pages on the Web has an HTTPD or Hyperte xt Transfer Protocol daemon that continually waits for requests to come in from Web clients and their users. There are several daemon in AIX environment, such as, sshd, inetd, and so on. Can you describe SAN in your won word? A storage area network (SAN) is a high-speed special-purpose network (or subnetw ork) that interconnects different kinds of data storage devices with associated data servers on behalf of a larger network of users. Typically, a storage area n etwork is part of the overall network of computing resources for an enterprise. A storage area network is usually clustered in close proximity to other computin g resources such as IBM Power5 boxes but may also extend to remote locations for backup and archival storage, using wide area network carrier technologies such as ATM or SONET . A storage area network can use existing communication technology such as IBM's o ptical fiber ESCON or it may use the newer Fibre Channel technology. Some SAN sy stem integrators liken it to the common storage bus (flow of data) in a personal computer that is shared by different kinds of storage devices such as a hard di sk or a CD-ROM player. SANs support disk mirroring, backup and restore, archival and retrieval of archi ved data, data migration from one storage device to another, and the sharing of data among different servers in a network. SANs can incorporate subnetworks with network-attached storage (NAS) systems.

So you mention NAS, but What is NAS? Network-attached storage (NAS) is hard disk storage that is set up with its own network address rather than being attached to the department computer that is s erving applications to a network's workstation users. By removing storage access and its management from the department server, both application programming and files can be served faster because they are not competing for the same processo r resources. The network-attached storage device is attached to a local area net work (typically, an Ethernet network) and assigned an IP address. File requests are mapped by the main server to the NAS file server. Network-attached storage consists of hard disk storage, including multi-disk RAI D systems, and software for configuring and mapping file locations to the networ k-attached device. Network-attached storage can be a step toward and included as part of a more sophisticated storage system known as a storage area network (SA N). NAS software can usually handle a number of network protocols, including Microso ft's Internetwork Packet Exchange and NetBEUI, Novell's Netware Internetwork Pac ket Exchange, and Sun Microsystems' Network File System. Configuration, includin g the setting of user access priorities, is usually possible using a Web browser . What is SMTP and how it works? SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a TCP/IP protocol used in sending and re ceiving e-mail. However, since it is limited in its ability to queue messages at the receiving end, it is usually used with one of two other protocols, POP3 or IMAP, that let the user save messages in a server mailbox and download them peri odically from the server. In other words, users typically use a program that use s SMTP for sending e-mail and either POP3 or IMAP for receiving e-mail. On Unixbased systems, sendmail is the most widely-used SMTP server for e-mail. A commer cial package, Sendmail, includes a POP3 server. Microsoft Exchange includes an S MTP server and can also be set up to include POP3 support. SMTP usually is implemented to operate over Internet port 25. Do you have any idea about NAT? Short for Network Address Translation, an Internet standard that enables a local -area network (LAN) to use one set of IP addresses for internal traffic and a se cond set of addresses for external traffic. A NAT box located where the LAN meet s the Internet makes all necessary IP address translations. NAT serves three main purposes: * Provides a type of firewall by hiding internal IP addresses * Enables a company to use more internal IP addresses. Since they're used in ternally only, there's no possibility of conflict with IP addresses used by othe r companies and organizations. * Allows a company to combine multiple ISDN connections into a single Intern et connection. Explain DHCP and its uses to an environment? Short for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a protocol for assigning dynamic IP addresses to devices on a network. With dynamic addressing, a device can have

a different IP address every time it connects to the network. In some systems, the device's IP address can even change while it is still connected. DHCP also s upports a mix of static and dynamic IP addresses. Dynamic addressing simplifies network administration because the software keeps track of IP addresses rather than requiring an administrator to manage the task. This means that a new computer can be added to a network without the hassle of manually assigning it a unique IP address. Many ISPs use dynamic IP addressing f or dial-up users. What does SNMP stands for? Short for Simple Network Management Protocol, a set of protocols for managing co mplex networks. SNMP works by sending messages, called Protocol Data Units, to d ifferent parts of a network. SNMP-compliant devices, called Agents, store data a bout themselves in Management Information Bases and return this data to the SNMP requesters. What do you know about TCPDump? TCPdump is a common computer network debugging tool that runs under the command line. It allows the user to intercept and display TCP/IP and other packets bein g transmitted or received over a network to which the computer is attached. Tcpd ump works on most Unix-like platforms: Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX and AIX among others. On Windows, WinDump can be used; it's a port of tcpdump to Win dows. You must have a root or super user authority to use TCPdumps in UNIX like envrio nment. How do I remove a volume group with no disks? This is a very common question about AIX LVM and I knew that you will ask me thi s one. Within a volume group there is a Volume Group Descriptor Area (VGDA) whic h is kinda a "suitcase" of lvm information. This is what allows you to pick up your drives and take them to another machine, importvg them, and get filesystems automatically defined. What happens, when you importvg the volume group, the command goes out and reads the VGDA and finds out about all the logical volumes and filesystems that may e xist on the volume group. It then checks for clashes (name conflicts, etc..) on its own mach ine and then, populates its own database with information about the new volume g roup and its associated logical volumes. In cases of file systems, it will go into the /e tc/filesystems file and add the new filesystem entries that came along with the imported volume group. The main question I see is "I've taken away the disks, but how do I get rid of t he volume group". The question should really say, "How do I get rid of the volum e group INFORMATION" since that's all you have on the system. You've got possibl e entries in the /etc/filesystems and definitely entries in the ODM. Just do: exportvg It does a reverse importvg, except it doesn't go off and read the VGDA. It nukes anything relating to the volume group in the /etc/filesystems and ODM. The only time this won't work is if the system detects that the volume group is varied o n. Then, it would be like trying to change tires on a moving car, we won't let y ou do it!

How do you you get rid of a disk that is no longer really in the VG? In this case, you DON'T want to do an exportvg. What you want to do is tell the system you want to cut out the memory of the old, bad disk from the RS/6000 AND from the VGDA of the volume group. You simply do: reducevg -d -f or if the hdname can't be found: reducevg -d -f Be careful with this command. Unlike the exportvg command, actions done with this command WILL affect the VGDA information on the platter. What is Capacity on Demand? Capacity on Demand (CoD) encompasses the various capabilities for you to dynamic ally activate one or more resources on your server as your business peaks dictat e. You can activate inactive processors or memory units that are already install ed on your server on a temporary and permanent basis. Usually, the Capacity on Demand is used for IBM System i5 and eServer i5 and IBM S ystem p5 and eServer p5 520, 550, 570, 590, and 595 models. Some servers include a number of active and inactive resources. Active processors and active memory u nits are resources that are available for use on your server when it comes from the manufacturer. Inactive processors and inactive memory units are resources th at are included with your server but are not available for use until you activat e them. What is Hardware Management Console (HMC)? The HMC is a server or stand alone machine that provides a graphical user interf ace tool to manage several Power Systems. The HMC manages system through hypervi sor and operating system. From version 7 it is truly web based and you can confi gure, installs and manage, partitioned, virtualization most of your Power5 and 6 boxes via HMC. There are many tasks you can do with HMC, such as, * Powering off and on of the partition * Configure and activate resources to the system * Creates and stores LPAR profiles and allocated resources to them. * HMC do the dynamic memory reconfiguration of the partition. * Setup VIO server and VIO client thru HMC and do micro-partition, create st orage * pool and processor pool with it * Provide virtual console to the partition Most of the time we installed dual HMC for redundancy and make sure to achieve m ore uptime in a wide system Why do I need a Hardware Management Console, anyway? You need a HMC if you plan to: Configure and manage logical can configure LINUX partitions Perform DLPAR (dynamic LPAR) Activate and manage Capacity partitions and partition profiles (selected models without a HMC). functions. on Demand resources.

You can also use the HMC to: Perform service functions Manage frames (towers), IOPs and IOAs. * Note that you cannot see below the IOA to the device level. Manage system profiles (yes, you can have more than one!) Power on and power down. The Service Processor is always hot if there is power t o the server. Activate and manage Virtualization Engine technologies. 5250 emulation so you can get a console up on a i5/OS partition or a virtual ter minal window for AIX or LINUX. What is kernel? The kernel is the essential center of a computer operating system, the core that provides basic services for all other parts of the operating system. A synonym is nucleus. A kernel can be contrasted with a shell, the outermost part of an op erating system that interacts with user commands. Kernel and shell are terms use d more frequently in UNIX operating systems than in IBM mainframe or Microsoft W indows systems. Typically, a kernel (or any comparable center of an operating system) includes a n interrupt handler that handles all requests or completed I/O operations that c ompete for the kernel's services, a scheduler that determines which programs sha re the kernel's processing time in what order, and a supervisor that actually gi ves use of the computer to each process when it is scheduled. A kernel may also include a manager of the operating system's address spaces in memory or storage, sharing these among all components and other users of the kernel's services. A kernel's services are requested by other parts of the operating system or by app lication programs through a specified set of program interfaces sometimes known as system calls. What is RMC? The Resource Monitoring and Control (RMC) subsystem is the scalable backbone of RSCT that provides a generalized framework for managing resources within a singl e system or a cluster. Its generalized framework is used by cluster management t ools to monitor, query, modify, and control cluster resources. RMC provides a si ngle monitoring and management infrastructure for both RSCT peer domains and man agement domains. RMC can also be used on a single machine, enabling you to monit or and manage the resources of that machine. However, when a group of machines, each running RMC, are clustered together, the RMC framework allows a process on any node to perform an operation on one or more resources on any other node in t he domain. What information is stored in Object Data Manager? It is a database of system and device configuration information integrated into IBM's AIX operating system. The ODM is unique to AIX compared to other UNIX oper ating systems. Example of information stored in the ODM database are: * * * * * * * Network configuration Logical volume management configuration Installed software information Devices that AIX has drivers for Logical devices or software drivers Physical hardware device installed Menus, screens and commands that SMIT uses

Explain a little about Vital Product Data (VPD)? VPD in AIX and Linux is a collection of configuration and informational data ass ociated with a particular set of hardware or software. VPD refers to a subset of database tables in the Object Data Manager (ODM), Therefore the VPD and ODM ter ms are sometimes referred to interchangeably. Vital product data (VPD) stores information such as part numbers, serial numbers , and engineering change levels from the Customized VPD object class or platform specific areas, not all devices contain VPD data. Does HACMP work on different operating systems? Yes. HACMP is tightly integrated with the AIX 5L operating system and System p s ervers allowing for a rich set of features which are not available with any othe r combination of operating system and hardware. HACMP V5 introduces support for the Linux operating system on POWER servers. HACMP for Linux supports a subset o f the features available on AIX 5L, however this mutli-platform support provides a common availability infrastructure for your entire enterprise. What applications work with HACMP? All popular applications work with HACMP including DB2, Oracle, SAP, WebSphere, etc. HACMP provides Smart Assist agents to let you quickly and easily configure HACMP with specific applications. HACMP includes flexible configuration paramete rs that let you easily set it up for just about any application there is. Does HACMP support dynamic LPAR, CUoD, On/Off CoD, or CBU? HACMP supports Dynamic Logical Partitioning, Capacity Upgrade on Demand, On/Off Capacity on Demand and Capacity Backup Upgrade. If a server has LPAR capability, can two or more LPARs be configured with uniqu e instances of HACMP running on them without incurring additional license charge s? Yes. HACMP is a server product that has one charge unit: number of processors on which HACMP will be installed or run. Regardless of how many LPARs or instances of AIX 5L that run in the server, you are charged based on the number of active processors in the server that is running HACMP. Note that HACMP configurations containing multiple LPARs within a single server may represent a potential singl e point-of-failure. To avoid this, it is recommended that the backup for an LPAR be an LPAR on a different server or a standalone server. Does HACMP support non-IBM hardware or operating systems? Yes. HACMP for AIX 5L supports the hardware and operating systems as specified i n the manual where HACMP V5.4 includes support for Red Hat and SUSE Linux. What is nmon tool do? The nmon tool is designed for AIX and Linux performance specialists to use for m onitoring and analyzing performance data, including: * CPU utilization

* Memory use * Kernel statistics and run queue information * Disks I/O rates, transfers, and read/write ratios * Free space on file systems * Disk adapters * Network I/O rates, transfers, and read/write ratios * Paging space and paging rates * CPU and AIX specification * Top processors * IBM HTTP Web cache * User-defined disk groups * Machine details and resources * Asynchronous I/O AIX only * Workload Manager (WLM) AIX only * IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) disks AIX only * Network File System (NFS) * Dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) changes only pSeries p5 and OpenPower for either AIX or Linux Also included is a new tool to generate graphs from the nmon output and create . gif files that can be displayed on a Web site.

What is Logical Volume Manager(LVM) means? The set of operating system commands, library subroutines and other tools that a llow you to establish and control logical volume storage is called the Logical V olume Manager (LVM). What is a Logical partition? A logical partition (LPAR) is the division of a computer s processors, memory, an d hardware resources into multiple environments so that each environment can be operated independently with its own operating system and applications. Explain Network File Systems(NFS)? The Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system that allows users to access files and directories of remote servers as if they were local. Suppose, Server A, that makes its file systems, directories, and other resources availabl e for remote access. Client s computers, or their processes, that use a server s res ources. Export the act of making file systems available to remote clients. Mount the act of a client accessing the file systems that a server exports. What is Network Information Service (NIS)? NIS was developed to simplify the task of administrating a number of machines ov er a network. In particular was the requirement to maintain copies of common fil es (e.g. password, group and host) across different systems. What is software RAID Levels do? Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) is formally defined as a method to store data on any type of disk medium. LDAP

The Light Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) defines a standard method for accessi ng and updating information in a directory (a database) either locally or remote ly in a client-server model. Thank you for reading this post, hope next post will come soon. That s all for tod ay.