IBM AIX
AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced /ˌeɪ.aɪ.ˈɛks/ ay-eye-EKS[5]) is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms.
"AIX" redirects here. For other uses, see AIX (disambiguation).Developer
Current
Closed source; formerly source available
February 1986[1]
7.3 TL2 / November 2023[2]
KornShell (ksh88),[3][4] Common Desktop Environment,
(Plasma Workspaces and GNOME optional)
Background[edit]
Originally released for the IBM RT PC RISC workstation in 1986, AIX has supported a wide variety of hardware platforms, including the IBM RS/6000 series and later Power and PowerPC-based systems, IBM System i, System/370 mainframes, PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server. It is currently supported on IBM Power Systems alongside IBM i and Linux.
AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions. It is certified to the UNIX 03 and UNIX V7 marks of the Single UNIX Specification, beginning with AIX versions 5.3 and 7.2 TL5 respectively.[6] Older versions were previously certified to the UNIX 95 and UNIX 98 marks.[7]
AIX was the first operating system to have a journaling file system, and IBM has continuously enhanced the software with features such as processor, disk and network virtualization, dynamic hardware resource allocation (including fractional processor units), and reliability engineering ported from its mainframe designs.[8]
Supported hardware platforms[edit]
IBM RT PC[edit]
The original AIX (sometimes called AIX/RT) was developed for the IBM RT PC workstation by IBM in conjunction with Interactive Systems Corporation, who had previously ported UNIX System III to the IBM PC for IBM as PC/IX.[21] According to its developers, the AIX source (for this initial version) consisted of one million lines of code.[22] Installation media consisted of eight 1.2M floppy disks. The RT was based on the IBM ROMP microprocessor, the first commercial RISC chip. This was based on a design pioneered at IBM Research (the IBM 801).
One of the novel aspects of the RT design was the use of a microkernel, called Virtual Resource Manager (VRM). The keyboard, mouse, display, disk drives and network were all controlled by a microkernel. One could "hotkey" from one operating system to the next using the Alt-Tab key combination. Each OS in turn would get possession of the keyboard, mouse and display. Besides AIX v2, the PICK OS also included this microkernel.
Much of the AIX v2 kernel was written in the PL.8 programming language, which proved troublesome during the migration to AIX v3. AIX v2 included full TCP/IP networking, as well as SNA and two networking file systems: NFS, licensed from Sun Microsystems, and Distributed Services (DS). DS had the distinction of being built on top of SNA, and thereby being fully compatible with DS on IBM mainframe systems and on midrange systems running OS/400 through IBM i. For the graphical user interfaces, AIX v2 came with the X10R3 and later the X10R4 and X11 versions of the X Window System from MIT, together with the Athena widget set. Compilers for Fortran and C were available.
Source code[edit]
IBM formerly made the AIX for RS/6000 source code available to customers for an additional fee; in 1991, IBM customers could order the AIX 3.0 source code for a one-time charge of US$60,000;[33] subsequently, IBM released the AIX 3.1 source code in 1992,[34] and AIX 3.2 in 1993.[35] These source code distributions excluded certain files (authored by third-parties) which IBM did not have rights to redistribute, and also excluded layered products such as the MS-DOS emulator and the C compiler. Furthermore, in order to be able to license the AIX source code, the customer first had to procure source code license agreements with AT&T and the University of California, Berkeley.[33]
Object Data Manager (ODM) is a database of system information integrated into AIX,[56][57] analogous to the registry in Microsoft Windows.[58] A good understanding of the ODM is essential for managing AIX systems.[59]
Data managed in ODM is stored and maintained as objects with associated attributes.[60] Interaction with ODM is possible via application programming interface (API) library for programs, and command-line utilities such as odmshow, odmget, odmadd, odmchange and odmdelete for shell scripts and users. SMIT and its associated AIX commands can also be used to query and modify information in the ODM.[61] ODM is stored on disk using Berkeley DB files.[62]
Example of information stored in the ODM database are: