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My UNIX experience was missing AIX. So now I have a problem as I have a mixture of just about all types of UNIX/Linux. So I need a little help for my AIX situation.

I'm trying to put the public domain programs on our AIX systems that our users want. What are the best sources for these packages? Is it kept up-to-date? What is the usual installation process for these.

I have mixture of 5.1 and 5.3-TL8 systems, and am especially interesting in deploying ssh on these systems.

Thanks again for your help!

mdpc
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AIX community usually sticks to the IBM Linux Toolbox for AIX. It contains a fair amount of Gnu programs, including ssh (by the way Gnu is not the same as "public domain"). Programs are easy to install (via rpm -ih xxx.rpm ). Sadly, toolbox is provided "as-is" by IBM, without support, and updated very rarely.

Second source I would look at is http://www.bullfreeware.com. Very similar, updated more often. Be aware that these packages use the same /opt/freeware/ path as IBM site, so you need to be cautious when mixing packages from both sites.

Another one is http://pware.hvcc.edu/. It packages in AIX native bff files, not rpm files. So install with smitty install_latest. It uses /opt/pware* path exclusively, so you can safely install along the other open-source packages. What I like about this site is that it has some useful "bundles", i.e. you can download a useful set of software in one shot (around 200 MB).

kubanczyk
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In addition to the sites listed above, the Perzl site is a great source for packages (RPMs) of open source software under AIX. The packages are updated frequently and usually include the expected compile options that can sometimes be a pain to pull off under AIX.

The Pware packages are quite nice but they are a bit of an "all or nothing" proposition in that they tend to be bundled together so one might be forced into installing a full LAMP stack (MySQL, PHP, etc) just to get Apache's HTTP server.

The Bull site is OK but I've run into problems with broken links or finding that packages don't include support for must-have features, eg - encryption support in OpenLDAP as an example (I could be wrong on the specifics here, as my memory of the details is hazy).

MKL
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  • No, no. With Pware I download the full bundle, but I am by no means forced to install the whole bundle. These bffs have proper dependency rules, so when I attempt to install a single bff (say apache), AIX automatically installs required bffs, and nothing more. In fact, just last week I've installed only openldap from the LAMP bundle this way, without Apache/PHP. – kubanczyk Dec 09 '09 at 16:25