AIX (was Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized?)

From	cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross)
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c, comp.unix.misc
Subject	AIX (was Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized?)
Followup-To	comp.unix.misc
Date	2026-05-15 22:30 +0000
Organization	PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC
Message-ID	<10u86q8$2tm$1@reader1.panix.com> (permalink)
References	<10u5a5v$nagc$1@dont-email.me> <10u7lps$b1s$1@reader1.panix.com> <10u7mdg$dt3m$1@dont-email.me> <10u8438$10so$2@dont-email.me>

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In article <10u8438$10so$2@dont-email.me>,
Janis Papanagnou  <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On 2026-05-15 19:50, Kalevi Kolttonen wrote:
>> 
>> I have never used AIX.
>
>It had been a progress back then, especially e.g. if compared to
>SunOS 4.x; it supported SysV and BSD IPC, and you didn't need to
>recompile the kernel if you just wanted to add (or configure) a
>kernel module.

SunOS 4.x had loadable kernel modules, too.

>We used it in huge (really *huge*) telecommunication projects as
>the standard OS (later extended our platforms by HP-UX).
>
>Re Dan's comment; from a user/programmer perspective I didn't see
>or noticed any noteworthy oddity.

There were several variants:

The first versions were AIX v1 and AIX v2 and ran on the IBM
"RT" workstation, a very slow, early RISC machine that wasn't
terribly popular.  IBM was delayed by several years bringing it
to market for for some reason I no longer recall, and by the
time they were available, they weren't cost/performance
competitive.  IBM did a port of 4.3BSD-Tahoe with NFS to the RT
and called it, "AOS": The Academic Operating System.  That had
some modest success in educational markets.  I'm told these
version sof AIX also ran on PS/2 machines, but I never used that
version.  I did use it on the RT; it was weird, though it didn't
feel gratuitously different from most System V variants of that
era, I guess.  Most people I knew ran AOS on it if they could
get it.

It was also ported to mainframes; first AIX/370, which was close
to AIXv2, I suppose, and and then AIX/ESA.  The latter was based
on OSF/1 and not directly descended from AIX/370 (I'm sure it
incorporated _some_ code from it, though).  I used that under VM
once or twice.  It was fine, I was accessing it from a 3270,
which felt weird.

AIX v3 and later ran on RS/6000 and following workstations.  I
think it was also ported to PCs, and at one point IBM had it
booting on an Itanium machine.

I guess from a user perspective, it was a pretty normalish Unix.
But the storage subsystem, printing, filesystem, the way it did
authentication and handled users, and even the way it booted,
were all very different from other Unixes.

The boot thing is illustrative.  Most Unix systems of the day
assumed they were booting on a workstation or a timesharing
system; in either case, it was assumed you had a console of some
kind, either a graphical thing or a serial terminal.  As the
kernel came up, it would print out short messages about devices
found during auto configuration, and so on.

AIX made no such assumption.  First, IBM didn't call it "boot"
or "booting"; instead, they called it "IPL" (Initial Program
Load[ing]).  And instead of a console and, you know, text, a
three character seven-segment display on the machine's front
panel, flashed numbers indicating what it was doing; the OS
came with a rather lengthy volume listing the numbers and what
they meant.  For example, "517" meant, "Mounting client remote
filesystem during network IPL."

The storage system was pretty cool, but very unfamiliar; it was
kinda mainframe-y.  They had "volume groups" that could have
multiple physical disks as members; the filesystem (JFS) was
built on a volume group so could thus span across multiple
disks.  Mounting a filesystem thus involved making sure the
hosting volume group was online, and then mounting it.  To bring
a VG online you would, "vary-on" the volume group (I believe the
command was called, `varyonvg` or something to that effect).
The nomenclature was, well, unique.

User accounts didn't just use the normal Unix /etc/passwd file;
there was also `/etc/security/passwd`, which contained extended
attributes and had its own format, and of course its own libc
routines to read, parse, lookup, and so on.

The printing stuff was kind of weird, but also kind of cool;
like most systems of the day, they had a line printer subsystem
inherited from an earlier age.  But instead of being a
descendent of the Berkeley `lpd` system, or System V `lp`, it
was its own IBM properietary thing.  You could communicate with
it using the BSD `lpr` protocol, but it let you do more
mainframe-y/big-minicomputer things like have a single queue
that dispatched to multiple printers round-robin, would direct
jobs from specific users to specific printers; that kind of
thing.  I eventually ripped it out and replaced it with a port
of the BSD printer daemon.

Anyway.  It wasn't _bad_ really, just ... different.

	- Dan C.

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Thread

Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-14 20:09 +0000
  Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-14 21:10 +0000
    Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-14 23:35 +0000
      Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 17:46 -0700
        Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 02:00 +0000
          Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 19:22 -0700
            Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 11:02 +0000
              Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 14:44 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 21:50 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 14:55 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 15:02 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-05-15 22:12 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-16 11:38 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-16 13:00 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-16 13:58 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-16 12:34 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-16 16:25 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-16 12:32 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-17 11:10 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-19 14:03 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-17 06:36 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-16 12:25 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-17 11:12 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-05-17 02:26 -0700
                Leader Keith has spoken! (Was: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized?) gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2026-05-17 12:54 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-05-17 19:19 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-17 21:53 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-17 20:30 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-18 08:14 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-17 20:01 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-18 09:13 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-18 09:51 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-18 14:34 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2026-05-18 16:49 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-18 16:19 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 22:32 +0000
            Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 15:23 +0000
              Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 17:28 +0000
              Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 17:40 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 17:50 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 18:28 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 21:35 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 15:05 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 22:35 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2026-05-15 17:18 -0700
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-16 08:07 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-16 12:44 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-15 23:44 +0200
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 21:47 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-05-15 22:10 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-05-16 01:13 +0200
                AIX (was Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized?) cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 22:30 +0000
                Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-16 08:04 +0000
    Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-15 07:07 +0000
      Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) - 2026-05-15 13:58 +0000
        Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-16 00:25 +0000
  Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 17:26 -0700
    Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-05-15 02:08 +0000
  Re: Is reallocarray() planned to be standardized? Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2026-05-16 11:28 +0200

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