Month: June 2022

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NTP Configuration on HMC with LPAR tool

NTP-Konfiguration HMC

The current status of NTP on an HMC can then be displayed using “hmc lsntp“:

$ hmc lsntp
NAME   XNTP     XNTPSTATUS    XNTPSERVER
hmc01  disable  -             -
hmc02  enable   synchronized  192.168.189.77,192.168.189.78
hmc03  enable   synchronized  192.168.189.77,192.168.189.78
$

Another NTP server can be added to the NTP configuration of an HMC using the “hmc addntpserver” command:

$ hmc addntpserver hmc01 192.168.189.77
$ hmc addntpserver hmc01 192.168.189.78
$

A check with “hmc lsntp” shows that two NTP servers are now configured, but NTP is still not activated:

$ hmc lsntp hmc01
NAME   XNTP     XNTPSTATUS  XNTPSERVER
hmc01  disable  -           192.168.189.77,192.168.189.78
$

NTP can now be activated with the command “hmc enablentp“:

$ hmc enablentp hmc01
$

The first sync may take a while:

$ hmc lsntp hmc01
NAME   XNTP    XNTPSTATUS      XNTPSERVER
hmc01  enable  unsynchronized  192.168.189.77,192.168.189.78
$

The time on the HMC is not yet synchronized immediately after enabling NTP (XNTPSTATUS: unsynchronized).

A detailed status for each NTP server can be obtained by using the “-a” option (all NTP servers):

$ hmc lsntp –a hmc01
NAME    SERVER         STATE          POLL_FREQ_SECONDS  SECONDS_SINCE_LAST_POLL
hmc01  192.168.189.77  not connected  64                 0
hmc01  192.168.189.78  not connected  64                 0
$

As soon as synchronization with one of the NTP servers is achieved, the overall status is synchronized:

$ hmc lsntp hmc01
NAME   XNTP    XNTPSTATUS    XNTPSERVER
hmc01  enable  synchronized  192.168.189.77,192.168.189.78
$

A more detailed description can be found here: NTP Configuration on the HMC

The LPAR tool can be downloaded for testing here: Download

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History Expansion bash

Drawing Shell

Many AIX and UNIX users use bash as their preferred shell. Navigating in the history with the cursor keys is certainly used countless times a day by all users. As long as the interesting commands are only a short time ago, this works very well. However, for commands longer in the past, access using the cursor keys is relatively time-consuming. Who wants to press the cursor keys 50 times to access a command?

The bash history expansion mechanism offers a much more efficient option here. Previous commands can be accessed using the history expansion character “!“. The commands can be specified in different ways:

    • The number of the command: !31
    • The nth previous command: !-n (e.g. !-3 for the third last command)
    • The last command that begins with a specific character string: !ca
    • The last command that has a specific character string anywhere: !?ca

However, the possibilities of the bash are far from exhausted. You can specifically access individual arguments of a previous command and even make changes.

Here are a few of those options:

    • !! (run the last command again)
    • ^op^art (run the last command again, but replace “op” with “art“)
    • cat !?sam?:% (run the cat command on the last argument containing the string “sam“)
    • vi !$ (Run vi on the last argument of the last command)

A description of these and other bash options can be found here:

The bash History Expansion