UNIX - AIX help? Maybe I can.

[JakeTheHake]

Yeah I know it is almost Off-Topic, since AIX is not Linux.
You have a question? Maybe I can help....

 

[koffiejunkie]

Got any suggestion for beard shampoo?

 

[JakeTheHake]

Hehehehe. I like your style....and your amount of posts. No sillyness when you get to 7,780.....or maybe only sillyness....
You can look into 'rm -rf .', but be careful, as you might just lose more than hair with a close shave like that. I normally just pipe it through to /dev/null with clippers on Sundays/Monday mornings - saves me a lot of effort. Besides, I'm not much of a beard-type of guy.
I.M.O. it is the conditioner that is the important one.

 

[yeti]

almost off-topic?

 

[koffiejunkie]

Beards are entirely on-topic for UNIX discussions. Let me give you some examples:

Dennis Ritchie (C):

Guido van Rossum (Python):

Richard Stallman (GNU, Free Software Foundation):

Brian Kernighan (Unix, Awk):

Ken Thompson (Unix, C, Plan 9)

Nick Kew (Apache)

Alan Cox (Red Hat kernel guy)

And yes, even Steve Jobs (OS X, NeXT)

 

[JakeTheHake]

You got me there. What about yours? You got a beard? Over here we have sunshine mostly, so beards, not much.
We have a couple of guys at work looking religiously take care of their beards....mostly Muslims.

And you into compeuters? You must be typeing very mutch, seeing that you have as many pousts as a airlaine pilot would have flying hours. Must be the koffie, junkie? I don't drink coffee. I do other things though.

All those pictures scare me, except Brian. He's a friendly coder. <nya-ha-haaa>

 

[koffiejunkie]

Sometimes I have a beard, sometimes not. I don't much like shaving but I don't like it getting long either.

Yes, I'm into computers. I started using Linux back when you *had* to compile your own kernel and it came on two 3.5" floppies. I've done just about everything in the IT industry over the years. These days I work for a hosting company, where myself and my team (40 odd people) take care of 20,000 Linux servers. Keeps me busy...

Regarding typing, when I was a first year student everyone in my course had to take this (unrelated) "information studies" which was basically how to work with MS Works (shudder), how to structure papers and do references properly, and it included a typing course. Of my entire degree, the typing is the only thing I ever use...

 

[JakeTheHake]

Sheesh, 20000, that is a lot. Imagine you have to log in to each one just to do something. You should be a fast typer.
Yeah, my 23 years of compeeuters had me start out with a "Panda" - an IBM 12kHz XT (16kHz if the TURBO button was depressed - sad little button) with a monochrome screen. I did a whopping 6-10 characters a minute. It was good in those days. One could actually have enough time not to make a spelling mistake. Kids of today don't have time for decent spelling as well. Th typ lk ths &xpct evr1 2 rd as fst as thy cn typ. Take me more time to read, so maybe they are onto something. Anyway - My world turned exciting when I found the dos command "mode co80". That was HUGE! I only saw things in color in the 90's. Damn, skipped EGA, since South Africa (still) behind the times.
I have my little matrix here in a data centre. Now turned HACS. Just completed the build. It looks like the google business' HACS. Spitspot and super tidy. Better than the old days' server rooms. Now you can freeze outside and crisp yourself inside. Oh, but the voices (from the humming), the voice will always be there. I once spend 9-16 hours each day for 6 days at a DR site migrating from old to new HW. EVERY morning at around 03:00 I get my head onto a pillow and low&behold THAT is when they want to start talking.... not just 2 of them, but the whole damn crowd. I would guess about 30 of them. They would go on as if I have been meaning to convince the others of something and had to wait for their queue- the queue when my head hits the pillow. Eish, those voices.
I do pSeries and AIX. The first day I saw that there was something other than DOS, was the day my life ended...and started all together. I swallod the blue and the red pill and since then, I have been doing 'set -o vi, ps -ef | , while true do, if then else fi' more than the amount of servers you look after. One tends to find the shorts for it, as you will know. I worked for IBM - only lasted 6 months. Great products, expensive as hell, crap company to work for = robots, all of them.
SDMC got me so frustrated. Boots forever. Who the hell thought of mixing Java and DB2 anyways. Got to buy that fly swat I've been promising myself - some people I still owe a couple of PKs (very hard 'slaps').

Anyways, got to suspend this LPAR I am in, else the I/O is not going to be fast enough to sort out swap space around 07:00. 19 Hours uptime is duly enough for this sysclick. Nice meeting you beardguy....err..I mean koffiejunkie.

 

[nivek]

think this hake is slightly cooked

 

[BigAl-sa]

think this hake is slightly cooked

Or he was at 02:04

@koffie: glad to see that I fit in very well with the bearded wonders in your earlier post

 

[NoLogic001]

We run 4 P-Series 770 and 4 P-Series 750. Totals around 200 LPARs. Been into AIX for the last couple of years. Moved away from Mainframe engineering/integration into the lovely realm of open systems.

So I might have a few questions.

How’s job opportunities for an AIX specialist?

Wonder if I made the right move…..

 

[GreGorGy]

You got me there. What about yours? You got a beard? Over here we have sunshine mostly, so beards, not much.
We have a couple of guys at work looking religiously take care of their beards....mostly Muslims.

And you into compeuters? You must be typeing very mutch, seeing that you have as many pousts as a airlaine pilot would have flying hours. Must be the koffie, junkie? I don't drink coffee. I do other things though.

All those pictures scare me, except Brian. He's a friendly coder. <nya-ha-haaa>

Hi Jake

How do I install a spell checker in Ubuntu that underlines words as I type them into web browsers?

 

[koffiejunkie]

Kids of today don't have time for decent spelling as well.

Apparently you don't either.

Regarding dealing with such a number of servers, we build tools for that, and do our best to keep them as consistent as possible. Unfortunately customers get in the way of that.

@koffie: glad to see that I fit in very well with the bearded wonders in your earlier post

LOL I wish. I'm a wannabe compared to those guys

Moved away from Mainframe engineering/integration into the lovely realm of open systems.
...
Wonder if I made the right move…..

Depends on how well you can sell yourself.

 

[JakeTheHake]

NoLogic001
"How’s job opportunities for an AIX specialist?
Wonder if I made the right move….. ""

The best move to make in my opinion is the one that get you to enjoy what you are doing. Sure money and all. Money is one thing, but soul is another.
Recently have been a senior AIX contractual position here in Cpt for a rough figure of R350-R420/h. One tends to work around 30-40 hours a week. You make the sums. Gauteng has got the most opportunities. Cape Town not that much at all. Besides, they are stingy here. I do work for peanuts, but thoroughly enjoy my environment. Some level of sanity exist, where I can walk 2 meters and out the front door and faced with 5km carps in a dam with ducks and a couple of egyptian geese...puts me right back here. Jozi life is harsh. I did the Ben Schoeman everyday. Stayed in Pretoria and worked in Sandton. NO FUN. I made double and a bit more in salary, but it was not worth it. I miss the moola now, though.
If you are looking, start with big companies, like BCX, EOH and the likes....even IBM. You will find something.
But you got to do what you like/love.


"Apparently you don't either."
Heyyy, come now man, I are speaking english very deliesheousley too.
...and...
"Regarding dealing with such a number of servers, we build tools for that, and do our best to keep them as consistent as possible. Unfortunately customers get in the way of that."
I feel you bru. Very much so. See, as the definition of insanity it to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, I tend to do something once. The second time I do it half way, leave it and spend time building something that will take care if the something indefinitely and report to me if/when it goes skew. Distributed shell by example, is one of those nice thingies. But you know that already.


And time to spell, well, sometimes I really wish I could buy time. To go to a store and swpie a card and it is like 5 hours earlier. I am surprised to feel again the suttleness of getting home at 17:00. Wow.

 

[JakeTheHake]

Hi Jake

How do I install a spell checker in Ubuntu that underlines words as I type them into web browsers?

Easy. I don't know. hehehehe

But seriously, you can try this website's admin. He might show you since spelling is a very complex code and it seems like this admin had a good thing going. My screen switches off if I have more than 4 words spelled wrong in a rou....I mean row.
Dammit.....

 

[koffiejunkie]

"Apparently you don't either."
Heyyy, come now man

Sorry man, no harm intended. I admit to being a spelling-nazi.

"Regarding dealing with such a number of servers, we build tools for that, and do our best to keep them as consistent as possible. Unfortunately customers get in the way of that."

What I meant here is our customers have root access to their boxes. We just support them.

I feel you bru. Very much so. See, as the definition of insanity it to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result

Aah yes. But what do you call it when you do something over and over, with reasonable (if desperate) expectations of the *same* result, but getting something different. That's our dilemma a lot of the time.

 

[JakeTheHake]

Sorry man, no harm intended. I admit to being a spelling-nazi.

Aah yes. But what do you call it when you do something over and over, with reasonable (if desperate) expectations of the *same* result, but getting something different. That's our dilemma a lot of the time.

And no harm done, good friend. I never thought of it that way. Mind you, I sit with it sometimes. Mostly with our network, since it is outsourced. I just do not get it. If this company is a business, then how can you (as that body) go around while linked up to a heart and lung machine....

Oh, and please take a guess on the obvious? We had 'musical headless chicken day' over here. The network had an annurism (or a stroke, when looking at the above parable). Everybody running around as if they heard that there is a tsunami on the way. That is when I grew quiet - I tend to be the one being busy and when it hits the fan, I'm cool, calm, collected and linearly keeping sense in what is what. 2 nights ago, when I was 'half cooked' (pore like poached if you ask me), I spent a good evening getting rid of each HMC's- and SDMC's DHCP server configuration - swapping it with static IPs. I TOLD them there was n/w irregularity. The wiped their butts when I told them, now they wiped the sweat off their faces with the same hand while talking on the phone with the other. Something about spanning tree apparently.

I had my own moment this morning - I have a Nokia N900. Just a dandy device. Never released in SA by service providers. It failed rigor testing 3 times. "The customer will return the device because they will just brick it". Rightly so. 100% open source and can dual boot, run Maemo, Meego, Debian (which I got on it - the full blown LXDE), NITdroid (Android port), Windows 3.1, 95, 98, XP, NT4 , MacOS and something else which I forgot. I bricked it 3 times and re-flashed the NAND more than 7 times. Apps GALORE. Anyways, so a year ago I managed to get onto the wifi network at work via a certificate we use for the laptops. A couple of days later I got "access denied". I left it at that. So I was playing around to try and see if I can get back onto the network this morning and sure thing it worked. That was when the song started playing. I knew "it wasn't meeeee", just like how everyone else went on. But at least thought of it that way. (Everyone has got to be EVIL sometimes - but only in a good way) Just to be safe, I checked the configs and test whether I was the culprit, but to my disappointment, not. Darn that. At least I can SSH back into my OS on the phone and tune it like just another OS I support.

Maintaining a serious level of consistency, especially when the client has got root, is a fine tuned skill you have to maintain. Almost like handing kids things that needs adult supervision then leaving them while you 'quickly have to go see the neighbor'. Nothing like getting paid for ID10T errors deriving from this move, but sometimes it is NOT worth the money, right?

Oh, and one thing I can not be slack on - tools for the job. My word! You can have me in a changed mood in seconds if you take my tools away. It is like the #2 without paper to finish the job. It is like the last jump-flight home that just took off without yourself on it, as you forgot that your watch is one hour behind and some supper can happen in the extra time you have to anxiously wait to go home....

...it happened to me. Coming from Angola {sigh - sure you may laugh} and arriving at the jump terminal right on time - exactly an hour late. Last flight out. "I am really sorry sir", he said. I heard myself scream "Yeah you stupid idiot - how does that meal taste now, hey?", but it came out as "AAAHHHHAAAAa @@#%@% @#%$$# jou dom @#$5*((#@!!!!!"
Apologies for the control characters. I think the whole Jhb intl. airport heard me. A lesson engraved so deep it still hurts. But laughing helps, so please do. I can't. I couldn't sleep either, so had to tap out 9 hours and get to luckily jump the first flight.

Back to the dillemma - I think maybe the fly swat can help as solution, but then again you are talking about customers. Not a good idea. I'll chew on it for a while.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Maintaining a serious level of consistency, especially when the client has got root, is a fine tuned skill you have to maintain.

It's a soft skill as much as a technical skill. We're very expensive, and it helps to be able to tell customers they're wasting their money if they don't listen to us. I've learned that it's much better to lead a customer to the outcome we would prefer rather than give them a dazzling array of options which their ill equipped to choose from. Other times I'm dispensing what is, essentially, business advice. It really saddens me to see people pour their life savings into an idea that relies entirely on software/hosting/infrastructure but not acquaint themselves with even the most basic concepts and technologies.

Almost like handing kids things that needs adult supervision then leaving them while you 'quickly have to go see the neighbor'. Nothing like getting paid for ID10T errors deriving from this move, but sometimes it is NOT worth the money, right?

Sigh. I ask myself this every day. I have job security, like few other. I would have to mess up real bad, several times, to get myself fired. People just don't learn, web developers still have no clue and they keep making the same mistakes over and over. Customers still get the cheapest developers they can find, and then wondering why nothing works properly when more than 2 people hit their site at the same time, when all that's really happening is they're getting what they paid for.

But geez, this is grinding me down. I can tell people what mistakes they're making in their PHP code just from the descriptions of their problem, without looking at their code, never mind not even knowing PHP myself. It's that repetitive. Real challenges are fewer and further between, the time I spent four years ago solving obscure problems or cooking up elegant solutions to crazy convoluted problems, is slowly getting replaced with the immensely unsatisfying task of automating things that should really be done by humans, streamlining processes and fixing things that aren't broken but are nevertheless problems because ITIL says so.

Maybe I should revisit my childhood dream of being a fire-fighter...

 

[JakeTheHake]

Ooooo , o o o o, you got me fired up with this box of discussion topics you opened. Maybe for the mere fact that see eye to eye on this thing about how situations and decisions are handled. I don't know where to start, but since this is a discussion forum, I'll keep it short.

Somewhere in childhood I traded my magic for reality. It was around the age of 7. I intentionally and specifically remember making the decision of letting go and officially starting to 'grow-up'. It took me about 6 years of contrasting feedback from this world to realise I've been 'had'. There I was, longing back for my magic and hating this ... this LIE. I recon that is when one initially turns to the bottle - the grownups bottle. Only after I did all I could to find reason for this madness (flying, sports, partying, extremes, work, you get the picture..) I ended up realising that its all a spiral. So after 15 more years I eventually ended up "nowhere" and with the words "I'm done" gave myself away and found life........that is when He said "Is it my turn now? You sure?" Not long after that I graduated from the university of life and have my Doctorate in "Dr TL CoSe" (Truthful Life, Common Sense).

Why this side talk? Well, to talk with you on how people treat things like decisions and situations. They want to have good come off something, yet insist on their way of the argument. They want to cut costs but fail to look into WHERE and HOW to get it done - you don't just grab the scissors/knife and start cutting. I SO agree with you that one has got to guide someone into them making the right decision.

I see money down the drain on an almost daily base. The amount of money going down that poophole is large enough for me to stay depressed for a very long time. To give you an example - A 8GB 2 port firbe channel adapter that runs on a p7 server costs roughly R35000. We need one and I can remove an unused one from another server we have and install it in the one we do need - online even, due to the enabled capability. But as it so happens that there are a bunch of universes being maintained here the end result is that I am not allowed to do it because of this type of politics. Business takes a punch for a while. It was left at that. A month later 2 of those cards arrived and nobody knows where it comes from. Someone signed a payment of ~R70000 for these cards. It was lying on someone's desk for around for 2 weeks and eventually someone told me that these were meant for the system we were in need for. I got the cards, installed it and still up to today those card have not been in use.

I could have paid my car off with those 2 adapters.

It is sad to see how one can waste something as valuable as what someon elese can deem a 'year's salary. I also understand the theory or relativity.....and this is relatively stupid. The only way to get is to give. Now where is that fly swat I mentioned?

Have a good weekend!

 

[NoLogic001]

NoLogic001
"How’s job opportunities for an AIX specialist?
Wonder if I made the right move….. ""

The best move to make in my opinion is the one that get you to enjoy what you are doing. Sure money and all. Money is one thing, but soul is another.
Recently have been a senior AIX contractual position here in Cpt for a rough figure of R350-R420/h. One tends to work around 30-40 hours a week. You make the sums. Gauteng has got the most opportunities. Cape Town not that much at all. Besides, they are stingy here. I do work for peanuts, but thoroughly enjoy my environment. Some level of sanity exist, where I can walk 2 meters and out the front door and faced with 5km carps in a dam with ducks and a couple of egyptian geese...puts me right back here. Jozi life is harsh. I did the Ben Schoeman everyday. Stayed in Pretoria and worked in Sandton. NO FUN. I made double and a bit more in salary, but it was not worth it. I miss the moola now, though.
If you are looking, start with big companies, like BCX, EOH and the likes....even IBM. You will find something.
But you got to do what you like/love.


"Apparently you don't either."
Heyyy, come now man, I are speaking english very deliesheousley too.
...and...
"Regarding dealing with such a number of servers, we build tools for that, and do our best to keep them as consistent as possible. Unfortunately customers get in the way of that."
I feel you bru. Very much so. See, as the definition of insanity it to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, I tend to do something once. The second time I do it half way, leave it and spend time building something that will take care if the something indefinitely and report to me if/when it goes skew. Distributed shell by example, is one of those nice thingies. But you know that already.


And time to spell, well, sometimes I really wish I could buy time. To go to a store and swpie a card and it is like 5 hours earlier. I am surprised to feel again the suttleness of getting home at 17:00. Wow.

lol. I already work for BCX. The mainframes guys get paid well, but it a very closed off group of people. That is way Im trying something else.

You are an AIX engineer right? What salary are you guys looking at? More or less?