syslog

As I mentioned in my February column, readers have recently expressed interest in receiving additional AIX administration information. We've aimed over the years in this magazine to present solutions and tools that are UNIX general -- that is, applicable to many or all flavors of UNIX with little modification. Providing that type of broadly applicable information continues to be our goal, but in response to these requests, we will also provide occasional extra issues that allow for more specific coverage of topics.

I received a good response to my call for AIX-specific articles, and I think this supplement offers a strong mix. Articles of particular interest include Sandor Sklar's article on the AIX error logging facility. Sklar explains how this logging tool works, and he shares a script that checks the log for error messages, filters out common error messages, and sends alerts. Mike Wilcox describes features of the Network Dispatcher tool, and Primitivo Cervantes explains how IBM's HAGEO product can be used for real-time remote data mirroring. Rich Ferri (who also recently contributed a conference report of the Extreme Linux Developer's Conference for UnixReview.com) discusses in general terms IBM's commitment to Linux, and provides a list of major Linux tools that IBM has ported to AIX.

You may have noticed another item inside the polybag this month. IBM has put together a collection of Technology Papers especially to accompany this issue that provides further AIX-specific information. The collection is titled AIX 5L: World Class UNIX with Linux Affinity and includes papers describing the use of the Web-Based System Manager, AIX Workload Manager, and the Logical Volume Manager.

I hope this special issue and the accompanying technology papers are helpful to all those Sys Admin readers who administer AIX systems. Please send comments and suggestions to me at: aankerholz@cmp.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours,

Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief