[Wanderer]

I am a small business owner, and, out of necessity, use AIX for one of our CAD workstations. There is no networking, we are simply tied to this platform. I have a project that I am currently working on that required an older version of software to be installed, and in doing so, I accidentally deleted something that prevented me from being able to log in under any profile, including root. So, basically I reinstalled AIX, (which is OK - better for us, even) but I simply don't know my way around all that well. My questions are basic, so I'll just ask them, and leave it up to the user to either answer directly, or point me to a resource. I need answers in layman's terms, however.

1) I need to increase the size of a file system. In this case, I need to update the oslevel, and I was thinking to put the update tar.gz in its own folder under /tmp. However, it tells me that there is not enough space in that file system. I had thought that I needed to do a "chfs -a size=" in order to accomplish this, but it fails every time, citing "not enough space - delete some files and try again".

2) what is the logic of the directories in Unix? (meaning, what files should I put where?) Is /tmp really a temp directory for things like installs? Or is /usr more appropriate?

3) Can I create a file system on an existing folder? (I think that's what mount point is, but not sure)

I'm really lost on the whole file system thing. Basically, all that I need to do is get a program up and running. Preparing AIX for installation is the hardest part of the job. I have installed the software dozens of times, but only a ground up install once or twice. Either I've forgotten something, or I've got another problem.

Thank you in advance for any help.

[saschak]

Hi,

I'll answer your questions quickly as I have not much time.
1) You need to have some space left before you may increase the FS. A 100% full FS can't be seized.

2) It's up to you. Binaries (executables) should go somewhere to /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin, ... the main thing to keep in mind is that these paths are in the $PATH variable so that you dont need to enter the full path when running a bin.

3) Yes you can, but in case you have files in that directory, they will be overmounted by the new filesystem. They won't get lost, but be hidden when you mount the FS.
My 2 cent: Move the files to a temporary directory, create and mount the FS and then move the files back there.

HTH
Sascha

[Wanderer]

Originally Posted by saschak

Hi,

1) You need to have some space left before you may increase the FS. A 100% full FS can't be seized.

OK, but it gives me this message after a clean install, even when I delete all of the files in the /tmp folder.

Additionally, I am up to my 7th re-install, because I keep breaking something. I have this problem where I try to create a file system, and no matter how much space I allot, I always get a "not enough space" error. So I delete the file system, and try again. Eventually, I end up not being able to log in.

Also, I cannot seem to run any of my updates from the /cdrom. I am trying to run the 5.2.0.5 update from smit installp, as the original tar.gz file. However, it never seems to see it on the disk. (no installable media) I can't remember how I did this before, but I did. Same thing with Fortran. I have this on a disk, and I don't know how to get it to run. (thought it was smit update_by_fix, but that isn't working)

Yes, /cdrom is mounted.

Thanks for the advice.

[baz]

I think what saschak meant to say is "A 100% full /tmp FS can't be resized". You can increase any other filesystem that is at 100%. Therefor if you run out of space in tmp you need to make space available within this filesystem to increase it.

Do an "lsvg rootvg" to see the available space in the volume group to see how much space you can give to /tmp. Then do a "df -k /tmp" to see how much space you have left in this filesystem. You say you run the "chfs -a size=" command, what value did you set? Is it greater then the free space in the volume group?

You cant update the system from a tar file you need to extract it first then do a "smit update_all". You'll first have to fix your FS problems before you can look at this issue.

[ross.mather]

In theory /tmp is a good place for these temporary files. However it has some specific operating system use so it may not be the best place to drop the temporary file. Of course the volume group containing /tmp (rrotvg) could be full.

Try the following commands to see what we are dealing with:
lsvg rootvg
lspv
lsvg -l rootvg
getconf DISK_SIZE /dev/hdisk0 (repeat forother hdisks)

I tend to create an /installfs for this sort of work and delete it again when I'm done.

As to where you install a particular application - that depends on the application in question, someof them are very picky about where you install them, and some aren't/ /opt and /usr/local are two common places to install things.