From: gboice@slate.mines.colorado.edu (BOICE GINA LYNN)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
Subject: 3.2 upgrade observations
Keywords: long
Date: 15 Apr 92 15:58:54 GMT
Organization: Colorado School of Mines

I have started upgrading my RS/6000's to 3.2 and have run across
a few gotcha's that I thought I would pass on.  I have 30 RS/6000's
with four fileservers.  I have started upgrading non-server machines.
Servers will be last.

Installation:

IBM put some work into the installation for a change.  I have used a
few of the utilities to save old files and the merge utilities to
re-add them after the upgrade. The merge utility will create two
directories on /tmp (3.1 and 3.2) restore the old files and make copies
of the new versions.  We ran out of space on /tmp during the
procedure.  Our /tmp directory was 12Mb and needed to be about 15Mb.
The procedure aborted and cleaned up.  We increased the file size, ran
the utility again and it worked.  It gives a summary at the end of
files that it could not merge (because of massive changes) and creates
a log of the information.

The actual installation now checks for pre-reqs, checks for available
space and aborts when not enough space is available.  It also only
increases the file system size by a small amount.  After installation
/usr was about 98% full.

300MB disks are two small for this new upgrade.  Unfortunately, my
non-server machines have the 300 mb disk on them.  I choose not to
share /usr all over the network, so I had to customize.  I found that
if I dropped all info files, and the X11dev toolkit I could fit with
adequate page space.  All user files reside on the network so I do not
allocate any space to /home (formally /u).  Watch out for X11 fonts
(you must be selective), they total over 75 MB's compressed.  I have not
decided what I will do about the X11dev kit, I imagine I will serve
that over the network.

Post-installation:

/usr can stay at a pretty full level.  IBM has made it into a
read-mostly filesystem.  The only directory that may change in size is
/usr/local.  In this environment /usr/local is a separate filesystem so
thats not a problem.

/var now holds all of the writable areas that use to be in /usr.  This
includes the spool directory, the /usr/tmp directory,  and the adm
directory.  The default size of /var is 4Mbs. This is really short
sited.  Since the printer also spools  to /var and we print a great
deal of postscript files, 4Mbs is not enough space.  On a small disk
this can be a real problem.  Our mail is served over the network so
that relieves some of our space problems.

vi
In the version of AIX I have vi sets the tmp directory to /var/tmp,
this is really annoying.  Either I link /var/tmp to /tmp or teach all
of my users how to create a .exrc files.  I have reported this to IBM.

mail
I serve /usr/spool/mail over the network, it used by both 3.1 and 3.2
systems.  bellmail (under 3.2) is run by bin with group as mail.  Under
3.1 bellmail is run by root and group of system.  Mail spool files
under 3.1 had a mode of 600.  Under 3.2 spool files have a mode of 660
and a group of mail.  3.2 bellmail cannot deliver mail into a 3.1
folder until you change the protection and the ownership.  

Overall:  
X11R4 is worth all the hassles for us.  We now can compile X-contrib
software without much problem.  Imake works well, and X seems to be 
less buggy than before.  We are not having screen lock-ups,
and the machines are behaving quite well.

Gina Boice
Colorado School of Mines
gboice@mines.colorado.edu