From: svpillay@berlioz.crs4.it (Kanthan Pillay)
Subject: Re: Legalities of making PTFs available for ftp?
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 12:38:35 GMT
Organization: CRS4, Center for Adv. Studies, Research, and Development in Sardinia

I started off by asking:
>>>> What are the issues involved in my setting up a repository of AIX PTFs
>>>> for anonymous ftp?

In article <86645@ut-emx.uucp> taluskie@utpapa.ph.utexas.edu (Vince Taluskie) writes:
>
>The problem is making sure that you have all the pre-reqs needed for
>a fix and with the HUGE amount of fixes out there knowing where your
>system is at any given time is difficult since sometimes installing a
>fix will break something else.

There are two ways one could go about this. One is to install all PTFs
in a single directory, run inutoc on it whenever something new arrives,
and create a compressed tar archive of the entire directory. The other
way is to split them into ptfs for particular problems. Example, the
automount PTFs for AIX 3.2.3 come on a single tape with all
prerequisites. These could be turned into a single IXxxx.tar.Z file.

>What I would much rather have more than anything else in this world is
>for IBM to take a group of their AIXers and have them install ALL the
>fixes in the system (fixing those conflicts that might arise between
>patches), then 're-gen the kernel' (as my SE liked to say) and STOP.
>Release that as AIX 3.3.0
>I would much rather have reliable operation of the system that I
>have now instead of any 'new features' and alot of unresolved 
>questions.  I would gladly do a re-install on my machines, if I
>knew that what I was getting was sound.

Absolutely. I administer an AIX/ESA system on an ES-9000/720 where I
have the same merry-go-round. The fact is though that the current system
of PTF acquisition is a pain. I place the order today and it arrives in
a month from Denmark. Okay, so Sardinia is an island, and the Italian
postal service is not famed for its efficiency, but IBM Cagliari (which
partially obscures my view of the sea out my balcony) is not able to get
it any quicker by placing the order themselves.

On the other hand, I do have access to the net, with a lot of people out
here who are ordering the same PTFs as I am, sometimes earlier,
sometimes later. It's a lot easier for me to set up an ftp archive (and
devote some ridiculous amount of disk space to it), than to try and help
the IBM bureaucracy get its head out of the sand.

So, to repeat: how legal is it for me to set up an ftp archive site for
IBM ptfs? I've been collecting responses, and everyone seems to like the
idea, but is it legal?

>I'd also like to know what people are doing who have a 400 MB disk
>as rootvg and are running out of space to install these fixes (even
>after commiting).

I exported a 300MB partition with anon=0 to all my 400MB machines, then
NFS-mount that on /tmp manually (so that it is not automatically
remounted when the system reboots). This seems to give installp enough
room to work with. Here's "df" from a 400MB system running 3.2.3 with
everything installed and with 64MB of swap.
/dev/hd4          4096     572   86%     733    71% /
/dev/hd2        286720   21560   92%   19210    26% /usr
/dev/hd9var       4096    3184   22%     107    10% /var
/dev/hd3          8192    7876    3%      33     1% /tmp

				Kanthan Pillay
				Unix Systems Administrator
				C R S 4
				Sardinia

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