AIX-config - AIX complete configuration gathering tool

The tool is capable of gathering lots of AIX configuration. It is based on config.sh from perfpmr (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/tools/perftools/perfpmr), but the whole script was completely rewritten and extended in many areas.  It produces output in a single (easily readable and searchable) HTML file: config.html (and an experimental XML ). It collects some user information but does not collect security info (like /etc/security/passwd, etc..) - therefore it is safe to send it over Internet.

I use the tool for two purposes:

1. documentation - when I finish an installation at customer site, I run AIX-config and give its output to the customer as installation documentation. Also I save it for future reference.
2. support tool - when a customer calls and reports a problem on AIX, this is the first tool I let him run and send me the output. It makes problem determination much easier.

I hope some people find it useful as well. Feel free to use it and send me comments and suggestions for extensions (mail). Thank you very much.

Plans are to generate XML (in companion to HTML) in future versions to allow for easy search, compare and information select. Experimental XML output is now added in version 07.

Collected information

The collected information is divided into several sections, the sections are.

Full listing of commands run is here: cmd_list

Current version is 0.8.
0.6 was a complete rewrite and re-structure of the script, the aim was to allow easy changes and extensions in the next versions.
0.7 adds experimental XML output and HACMP config section.
0.8 adds unique labels for commands, changes fonts in HTML and changes archive directory structure

Changes in 06:

• rewrite (to allow easy extension)
• changes in command order and grouping to allow easy reading of the output
• new commands:
• memdetails
• lsfcs.sh to show FC configuration
• listing of physical sizes of all hdisks
• EMC inq - disk inquiry (EMC inq)
• fcstat
• datapath query essmap
• pcmpath query essmap
• lsmcode
• lvmo -v vg -a
• sar -d

Changes in 07:

• basic HACMP configation is now collected
• EXPERIMENTAL feature (under development) - XML output
• EXPERIMENTAL feature (under development) - mangled XML-like output for easy viewing with XML Marker 1.1 (http://http://symbolclick.com/)

Changes in 08:

• directory cleanup: external scripts are now placed in ext directory, work files are in temp
• archive now unpacks in AIX-config_VERSION_ directory
• otput is now config-hostname.html (xml)
• font in HTML changed to Arial
• unique labels for each command

AIX-config usage

Simply untar the tool in an empty directory and then run the config.sh with appropriate command-line options in that directory. The output will be stored in the same directory (config.html and optionally config.xml and config-view.xml).

# ./config.sh -h
Usage: config.sh [-iomsxX]
        -i gather also instfix -i
        -o gather also ODM (/etc/objrepos) - saved in objrepos.tar.gz
        -m gather detailed memory (svmon -S,svmon -P)
        -s gather simple performance statistics (vmstat, iostat 16 seconds)
        -x EXPERIMENTAL .. generate XLM to config.xml
        -X EXPERIMENTAL .. generate mangled XML (for easy viewing in XML Marker 1.1) to config-view.xml
        HTML output is generated in config.html

For most easy usage just type:

# ./config.sh

output will be config.html

Viewing the output data

Viewing HTML

Viewing HTML is simple - just copy the output config.html to your PC and open it in a web browser (like Mozilla). Here is a sample output: (config.html). There is not much HTML formating in the output so it can also be easily read with any text viewing tool (like vi or notepad for example).

Hint: All commands as they were invoked to gather the data are included together with the output data. Therefore it is easy to do search (CTRL-F in Mozilla or / in vi) and type in the requested command just like if you were on a live system (lsvg -l rootvg for example). The data is directly bellow the command.

Viewing experimental XML

The tool (from version 07) is capable of producing XML(-like) output. I use freely available tool XML Marker 1.1 for viewing XML data (http://symbolclick.com/).
AIX-config has two XML related command-line options:
    -x .. XML output in config.xml (well, it is not exactly XML - it is how I imagie XML - the problem is that in know very little about XML - my TODO)
    -X .. XML-like mangled output in config-view.xml - it is the output that is most suitable and easy to browse in XML Marker

structure of config.xml:
<AIX-config label="hostname">
  <DATE>date run</DATE>
  <VER>version of AIX-config</VER>
  <SECTION label="section_name>
     <COMMAND label="command_label">
        <LBL>command label</LBL>
        <RUN_CMD>exact command run</RUN_CMD>
        <OUTPUT>output data</OUTPUT>
     </COMMAND>
     ...
  </SECTION>
  ...
</AIX-config>

structure of config-view.xml:
<AIX-config_HOSTNAME label="hostname">
  <DATE>date run</DATE>
  <VER>version of AIX-config</VER>
  <SECTION_LABEL>
     <COMMAND_LABEL>
        <LBL>command label</LBL>
        <RUN_CMD>exact command run</RUN_CMD>
        <OUTPUT>output data</OUTPUT>
     </COMMAND_LABEL>
     ...
  </SECTION_LABEL>
  ...
</AIX-config_HOSTNAME>

Here is an image of sample config-view.xml shown in XML Marker.

Download

AIX-config version 08 is here: AIX-config08.tar, AIX-config08.tar.gz

Also I suggest downloading the following external tools:

• EMC inq - disk inquiry (EMC inq) - you will get two binaries - one for 32-bit kernels and other one for 64-bit kernels. Rename the correct one (according to your kernel) to inq and place it in the same directory as you placed AIX-config.
• XML Marker 1.1. (http://symbolclick.com/) - install it on your PC and use it for viewing config-view.xml output. You can turn off "Table selection browser" in "View" menu, increase size of "Tree selection browser" and change fonts to monospace in Option->Font.

Have a lot of fun! And please give feedback.

All suggestions and extensions to the data collection set are very welcome:  mail. Also XML-related suggestions and pieces of code are very welcome.

Disclaimer

This tool is not officially supported by IBM. No warrantee is given or implied, and you cannot obtain help from IBM. It is a personal project of the author. Any comment and suggestion is really appreciated. Pieces of code from other authors are included (namely IBM - perfpmr, Daryl Scott - VIO config listing, lsfcs - Petr Budik, inq - EMC) - all of them are freely available and I give full credits to the respective authors (for more info please see comments section in the script source code).