What's New in AIX 4.2?

By Scott Trent

Although many new features and quality improvements have been added to AIX 4.2, some of the most interesting are the inclusion of a Bonus Pack (including Java, Ultimedia, Netscape Navigator, and Web servers) and support for large file sizes (up to 64 GB). These items, coupled with easy installation and migration, make AIX 4.2 an attractive operating platform.

Bonus Pack
The Bonus Pack includes several products; however, this discussion is limited to Java and Ultimedia.

Java
Java is a highly portable, object-oriented, platform-independent language uniquely suitable for writing programs that ideally can be enjoyed by anyone using the Internet. After installing (use the smit install command), take a look at the contents of /usr/lpp/Java/*. This directory contains the binary executables, header files, run times, demos, and Java classes. Here is a sample command to try out one of the demos. You can try the others by looking at the contents of the /demo directory. /usr/lpp/Java/bin/appletviewer/usr/lpp/Java/demo/BouncingHeads/example1.html Because the applet viewer is Web aware, you can use it to point to those URL's that contain applets anywhere on the Internet.

If you want to try your hand at writing Java programs, you can use the Java interpreter, Java class compiler, and debugging tools found in /usr/lpp/java/bin.


 * Hint: Take a look at /usr/lpp/java/README first.

Ultimedia
After installation, the Ultimedia Services package can be found in /usr/lpp/UMS/*. This package includes software for: To look at one of the movies in the package, issue this command: /usr/lpp/UMS/bin/run_ums dtmedia_player/usr/lpp/UMS/Samples/macaw.avi Another interesting application in the Ultimedia package is the ability to use text-to-speech synthesis. Suppose you want to use your AIX workstation as an expensive talking clock? Just add the following line to your crontab command (i.e., crontab -e), and your computer will announce the time every hour on the hour: 0 * * * * echo "The time is now `expr \\`date +\%I\\``Oh Clock" ! /usr/lpp/UMS/Demos/tts/bin/txt2spch
 * Speech recognition and synthesis
 * Graphic image viewing
 * Audio and movie playback
 * Note: The Ultimedia commands need to be typed on one line.

Large Files Support
AIX 4.2 supports files up to 64GB as well as devices that address up to 1TB of data. One of the subtle, but useful, results of this modification was that in many cases AIX-base commands were modified to support 64-bit arithmetic. The shells (Korn Shell, Bourne Shell, and C Shell), and a number of other commands were modified to handle arithmetic on values all the way up to 2^63 or 2^64 (depending on whether the command supports signed arithmetic.)

For example, if you want to add 100 to the number of words in a file, you might use ksh commands like this: value=$(cat bigfile ! wc -w) echo $(($value + 100)) These commands assume that any value generated will be small enough for the shell to handle.


 * Note: By default, large file support is not enabled, although 64-bit shell arithmetic is. Enabling large file support is not hard, simply follow these steps, as root:
 * Edit /etc/security/limits so that fsize = -1 in the "default:" stanza.
 * Type smit crjfs, select Add a Large File Enabled Journaled File System, and supply the requested information, such as volume group and size of file system.

Summary
AIX 4.2 offers additional standards compliance, dynamic loading, and additional support for the Network Time Protocol. For those not described in this article, take a look at the Q's & A's below.

Installation and migration is pleasantly easy; in fact, installation can take less than 20 minutes. Best yet, the AIX 4.2 migration facility allows you to gradually customize your environment over a period of years without having to start over from scratch each time you upgrade your operating system.