AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications

Licensing information
In addition to the GNU Public License (GPL), each of these packages includes its own licensing information. Please consult the individual tools for their licensing information.

The freeware packages ("Code") provided here are made available as a convenience to IBM customers. IBM does not own the Code, and did not develop or exhaustively test the Code. IBM does not provide support for the Code. IBM has compiled the Code so that it will run with AIX 5L. These packages are available for download via www.ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/linux/toolbox/download.html

Each Code package is subject to the terms of the license that is included in the Code package. IBM has extracted the license information associated with the Code packages for viewing convenience, but in all cases the actual licenses delivered with the Code package govern the usage of the Code package. By downloading a particular package you agree to accept and comply with the license terms that accompany such package.

No Warranty: The Code is provided "As is." To the extent permitted by applicable law, IBM disclaims all warranties either express or implied, including without limitation any warranty of non-infringement, noninterference, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose regarding the code or technical support, if any.

This exclusion also applies to any of IBM's subcontractors, suppliers, or program developers (collectively called "Suppliers"). Limitation of Liability: Neither IBM nor its suppliers are liable for any direct or indirect damages, including without limitation, lost profits, lost savings, or any incidental, special, or other economic consequential damages, even if IBM is informed of their possibility. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above exclusion or limitation may not apply to you.

Introduction
A number of open source packages have been prepared for installation on AIX 5L using the RPM Package Manager. These packages, also known as RPMs, are available on an as-is basis for beta-level use. Should you run into difficulties of any form, please report the problem to the AIX-Linux Affinity mailing list at aixtoolbox-list@lists.sourceforge.net

Installing the RPM Package Manager
In order to install the software, you must install RPM - the RPM Package Manager. Since you can't install rpm initially with rpm, it and a few requisite tools (gzip, bzip2, and patch) are available in installp format. You must install the installp image of RPM, which is available from the Linux Affinity image repository as installp/ppc/rpm.rte. You may also download the rpm installp image via a Netscape browser by holding down the shift key and the left mouse-button here. You install rpm as root as in the following example:

installp -qacXgd rpm.rte rpm.rte

The installation will take a few minutes because it needs to gather information about the shared libraries already installed on the system.

Using the RPM Package Manager
Full information on using RPM can be found at www.rpm.org. The basic installation operations are:

• -i: install
• -e: erase
• -q: query
• --help: help

For example, if you were interested in installing the package which provides the less page program, you would access the RPM package for less (as less-374-2.aix5.1.rpm.ppc in this example), then invoke rpm:

rpm -i less-374-2.aix5.1.rpm.ppc

You can install multiple packages at one time, as in rpm -i * It is a good idea when doing that to use the verbose (-v) flag; otherwise, rpm does not give any feedback unless there are errors.

After you've installed....
It is a goal of this project for you to be able to run the open source software without modification on your AIX system. The software is installed in the default location for the software, but there are symbolic links into the normal directories so that you may begin to use the software immediately. In some cases where an open source deliverable conflicts with an AIX deliverable, the link is not available, so an alternate PATH must be used. When there are conflicts with AIX commands and libraries, the link is placed in /usr/linux. For example, you will find a link to the GNU version of sed and other basic GNU commands in /usr/linux/bin (after you've installed the RPM packages for those commands). In order to access the man pages from the toolbox, add /opt/freeware/man to your MANPATH environment variable.

Click here for a listing of tools.