Hi everyone,

I would really appreciate if someone could help me. I am looking for some
docs which describes AIX day-to-day admin routines. Please don't laugh. I am
aware that administrators which work on rs6k or pSeries machines know what
they should do every day in order to keep the system alive, but I should
write some kind of document which describes day-to-day admin routines and am
afraid to forget something.
So, I am looking for document which on one place gives some kind of
checklists or overview of  tasks which should be run daily, monthly,
yearly...


Thkx!

PJ

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"Pipiron" <ivan_sardelic@net.hr> said:
>I would really appreciate if someone could help me. I am looking for some
>docs which describes AIX day-to-day admin routines. Please don't laugh. I a
m
>aware that administrators which work on rs6k or pSeries machines know what
>they should do every day in order to keep the system alive, but I should
>write some kind of document which describes day-to-day admin routines and a
m
>afraid to forget something.
>So, I am looking for document which on one place gives some kind of
>checklists or overview of  tasks which should be run daily, monthly,
>yearly...

It might help if you specified for what kind of purpose you're writing
this document. Also, if you're writing something like this, it sounds
like you already have some rs6k/aix admins nearby - is there a reason
you're not asking them?

And anyway, the list will be hard to write without knowing the environment,
because the duties vary a lot depending on how the overall environment is
set up.

Examples of these differences:
- is there a need to daily change backup tapes to a machine?
- could be, if the systems only have small tape changers,
or if the data is so critical that some tapes have to be
moved offsite daily
- but then, it could be that the backup is run with large tape
libraries, and even the offsite backup is handled with some
dedicated high-speed link to an offsite tape library
- need to daily check some log files for some events?
- perhaps, if no centralised monitoring has been set up
- ... but if there's a well-tuned centralised monitoring,
the appropriate people will be alerted on the moment when
the "interesting" events are generated
- the above also goes for monitoring free disk space; it could be
so that someone just manually checks whether there is disk space
available, but it could also be so that there's a monitoring system
which alerts when disk space has waned below some set threshold
- also, what kinds of services are run in the environment
- network infrastructure services (DNS, DHCP, SMTP, ...)
- databases
- business applications
- ...

... and so on. So, some generic lists could be written, but majority,
and often the most meaningful part, depends completely on the overall
environment.
--
Wolf  a.k.a.  Juha Laiho     Espoo, Finland
(GC 3.0) GIT d- s+: a C++ ULSH++++$ P++@ L+++ E- W+$@ N++ !K w !O !M V
PS(+) PE Y+ PGP(+) t- 5 !X R !tv b+ !DI D G e+ h---- r+++ y++++
"...cancel my subscription to the resurrection!" (Jim Morrison)

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Pipiron said the following, on 12/22/04 03:40:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I would really appreciate if someone could help me. I am looking for some
> docs which describes AIX day-to-day admin routines. Please don't laugh. I 
am
> aware that administrators which work on rs6k or pSeries machines know what
> they should do every day in order to keep the system alive, but I should
> write some kind of document which describes day-to-day admin routines and 
am
> afraid to forget something.
> So, I am looking for document which on one place gives some kind of
> checklists or overview of  tasks which should be run daily, monthly,
> yearly...
>
>

Since AIX is an IBM product, you might try looking at their range of
documentation:

<http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/library/>

The AIX Information Center lists 14 different "System Management Guides"
that you can download.

Also have a look at the O'Reilly books on systems administration.

--
Rich Gibbs
rgibbs@alumni.princeton.edu

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Juha thank you for your replay!
I am completely aware of the fact that such document can not be written in
generally and that "output" depends on specific environment. My task is to
write some kind of administrators checklist, which will give overview of who
is responsible for what and what should be done every day or every month or
twice on year in order to keep AIX system healthy.
Majority of the tasks I have in my mind but looking for as you said "generic
list", in order to have reference for the beginning.

Best regards,

PJ





"Juha Laiho" <Juha.Laiho@iki.fi> wrote in message
news:cqcjob$ps5$2@ichaos.ichaos-int...
> "Pipiron" <ivan_sardelic@net.hr> said: 
>
> It might help if you specified for what kind of purpose you're writing
> this document. Also, if you're writing something like this, it sounds
> like you already have some rs6k/aix admins nearby - is there a reason
> you're not asking them?
>
> And anyway, the list will be hard to write without knowing the
> environment,
> because the duties vary a lot depending on how the overall environment is
> set up.
>
> Examples of these differences:
> - is there a need to daily change backup tapes to a machine?
>  - could be, if the systems only have small tape changers,
>    or if the data is so critical that some tapes have to be
>    moved offsite daily
>  - but then, it could be that the backup is run with large tape
>    libraries, and even the offsite backup is handled with some
>    dedicated high-speed link to an offsite tape library
> - need to daily check some log files for some events?
>  - perhaps, if no centralised monitoring has been set up
>  - ... but if there's a well-tuned centralised monitoring,
>    the appropriate people will be alerted on the moment when
>    the "interesting" events are generated
> - the above also goes for monitoring free disk space; it could be
>  so that someone just manually checks whether there is disk space
>  available, but it could also be so that there's a monitoring system
>  which alerts when disk space has waned below some set threshold
> - also, what kinds of services are run in the environment
>  - network infrastructure services (DNS, DHCP, SMTP, ...)
>  - databases
>  - business applications
>  - ...
>
> ... and so on. So, some generic lists could be written, but majority,
> and often the most meaningful part, depends completely on the overall
> environment.
> --
> Wolf  a.k.a.  Juha Laiho     Espoo, Finland
> (GC 3.0) GIT d- s+: a C++ ULSH++++$ P++@ L+++ E- W+$@ N++ !K w !O !M V
>         PS(+) PE Y+ PGP(+) t- 5 !X R !tv b+ !DI D G e+ h---- r+++ y++++
> "...cancel my subscription to the resurrection!" (Jim Morrison)

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Rich thank you for your replay,

since I'm AIX administrator, do have all of these "System Management
Guides". I tried to find such docs on IBM web pages, but not satisfy. Sorry
for bothering you all, but as I said in my last post, need some kind of
reference for the start which will give general overview or some kind of
checklist for AIX administrators.

Best regards,

PJ

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

I have a script that I wrote to do all the daily tasks, partly listed
below, not all tasks will apply to your environment. You will want to
adapt any script you run to your environment. Note the scripts named
are mostly custom written for my work env.

As far as monthly, I'd check for user accounts that have not been used
in a while and deactivate them.
For yearly, (or every quarter) I'd apply the latest fixes to the OS.

Daily tasks for AIX and ORACLE and EMC environment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
echo dbchk.sh -q - CHECK FOR DATABASES RUNNING
echo "powerchk.sh -q - CHECK FOR POWERMT DISPLAY CHANGES"
echo "sorted runqueue size"
echo "sorted idle time"
echo "sorted bigcpu top procs for aix"
echo Patrol agent
echo ECC agent
echo EDM agent
echo "  lsps -s - CHECK PAGING SPACE"
echo "  mon_mem_usage.ksh - CHECK REAL MEMORY USE "
echo "  df -k grep 95-100% - CHECK FOR FILESYSTEMS GETTING FULL "
echo "   alog conslog - CHECK CONSOLE LOG"
echo "   fschk.sh -q - CHECK ALL FILESYSTEMS MOUNTED"
echo "  errpt.sh - ERROR REPORT FOR YESTERDAY"
echo "  lsdev -Cc disk grep defined - CHECK FOR DEFINED DISKS"
echo "   date - TIME SYNC DAEMON CHECK"
echo "   ROOT MAIL CHECK"

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Found this by googling:  unix system administrator +"yearly tasks"

http://www.giac.org/practical/carolyn_tarloff_gcux.doc

See the section entitled Administrative Procedures and Practices.  It
appears to be a summary of another list that is geared toward Solaris,
but it is also very general.  It should give you a starting point and
it has the overview and checklist you're looking for.

...but before you do that, make sure you read the following if this is
for GIAC or some other certification:
http://www.giac.org/practical.php

Hope this helps.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]