The Shell Scripts that make up AIX
Over the years I've noticed that a lot of the core utilities on AIX are actually shell scripts.
Here are some examples of these utilities on AIX that are either shell scripts (ksh/csh) or in some cases Perl scripts:
mksysb
oslevel
mkcd / mkdvd
useradd
userdel
usermod
prtconf
bosboot
mklv
shutdown
snap
lsconf
dsh
lsmksysb
savevg
which
chpv
chvg
cplv
exportvg
extendlv
migratelp
migratepv
mirrorvg
mktcpip
mkwpar
multibos
reducevg
reorgvg
replacepv
rmlv
rmlvcopy
splitlvcopy
splitvg
unmirrorvg
varyoffvg
As you can see, there are some pretty important commands in this list.
And this is just a small sample of them. On my AIX server I found that
there are over 400 scripts included as part of base AIX! You can see a
full list of all the scripts that make up your system by running a
command like this:
for dir in `echo $PATH | tr ":" " "`; do for file in `ls -1
"$dir" 2>/dev/null`; do [ -x "$dir/$file" ] && file
"$dir/$file"; done; done | grep -i script
It is pretty cool that so many of the core commands/utilities on AIX
are made up of shell scripts. For one, it shows that shell scripts can
take on very important and critical tasks. It can also be extremely
helpful to be able to review the scripts if you are having any issues
with any of these commands. And these scripts can be an excellent
learning tool. These are extremely well written and robust scripts many
of which have been used for decades on thousands and thousands of
servers.
