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Status Not under consideration
Workspace AIX
Created by Guest
Created on Mar 22, 2018

RELATED IDEAS

AIX Toolbox

More software teams are using the Linux tools in the AIX Toolbox. There is no coordination between these teams. It is very frustrating when tyring to install software such as WebSphere when the GUI installers require Linux tools in order to work.
When a user downloads an RPM from the AIX Toolbox, its dependencies are not listed, so they must step through RPM install efforts until they have determined, and installed all requisites. This can take hours and days to figure out. And even then there is no guarantee that you have everything needed. This request is for a list of package dependencies to be provided for each AIX Toolbox RPM and documentation that supports these installations. And how these will affect the AIX OS. When installing YUM there is a required updated AIX fileset rpm.rte. But when I installed this newer fileset it broke commands in my AIX OS. THERE WAS NO DOCUMENTATION TO TELL ME ANY WARNINGS THAT THERE WAS A REQUIRED AIX OS LEVEL TO INSTALL THIS VERSION RPM.RTE.
The WebSphere team had no idea. I got passed to the AIX support team.

So there not only needs to be a list of dependencies for all the Toolbox tools but also clearer documentation of pre-requisites and warnings for installation. Especially when AIX OS filesets are invovled.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Mar 27, 2018

    AIX toolbox provides open source tools/packages for AIX.
    There are many ways to get the list of dependent packages like ???rpm -qpR" and writing a script using it.
    But AIX toolbox provide yum tool that is far better than any other method, where all the dependencies are automatically installed.
    So there is no plan to provide list of dependencies as we provide yum.
    Lot of AIX customers are using yum to install open source packages from AIX toolbox and this is the best way.
    We would like to understand the issues faced by you in installing yum and rpm. Mostly this is the environment issue than AIX toolbox.
    For AIX toolbox related issues we recommend to use AIX open source software forum to report issues or requesting other functionality.
    https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/forum?id=2eb0f36d-9534-471b-8b27-c21e6c5b9b2b&ps=25

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Mar 26, 2018

    I have to disagree with the premise of this RFE:
    * The info requested is already available. RPMs have dependendies listed inside them. "rpm -qpR" will list them. A UNIX admin can script this to follow a dependency tree, or you can run this on each RPM and save the dump for manual review.

    * There are valid tools already available to do this. YUM itself works fairly well. Most breakages I have found come from systems which have non-IBM RPMs already installed.

    * This seems more of an administration complaint than a request for enhancement. Breakages from rpm.rte are most commonly from force installing an old version of rpm.rte onto a system. IBM cannot protect you from yourself. Other breakages can be from non-stantard RPMS, or using systemwide LIBPATH overrides that also are not something IBM can protect you from. Most breakages can be repaired by re-installing the base RPMs from yum_bundle, though in some cases, you have to rebuild the RPM database.

    That being said, when you have a bunch of non-IBM software installed, and you plan to do a major change/update to the IBM packages, this should always be done in a non-production environment. Converting to standard packages from non-standard packages is always difficult, no matter what the OS is.

    If you were using a large number of non-IBM packages, that would be equivalent to using SID on Debian, Proposed Universe on Ubuntu, or Fedora Rawhide, or AIX Beta in production, and then trying to update to a standard build. That usually takes time and high level skill. It's not any OS's responsibility to sort out the issues caused by replacing supported parts of the OS with third-party functions.

    * If you were only using Toolbox packages, and things broke during yum install, then that is a defect that needs resolved through your PMR, but again, having IBM run RPM commands for you seems less of an OS functionality thing than a "please admin my system for me". There are services for that.

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