Tag: history

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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

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Did you know that state and configuration change information is available on the HMC for about 2 months?

Status and configuration changes of LPARs and managed systems are stored on the HMCs for about 2 months. This can be used to find out, when a managed system was shut down, when a service processor failover took place, or when the memory of an LPAR was expanded, at least if the event is no more than 2 months ago.

The status changes of a managed system can be listed with the command “lslparutil -r sys -m <managed-system> -sh –startyear 1970 –filter event_types = state_change“, or alternatively with the LPAR-Tool command “ms history <managed -system> “.

linux $ ms history ms04
TIME                  PRIMARY_STATE         DETAILED_STATE
03/14/2019 08:45:13   Started               None
03/14/2019 08:36:52   Not Available         Unknown
02/17/2019 01:51:55   Started               None
02/17/2019 01:44:00   Not Available         Unknown
02/12/2019 09:32:57   Started               None
02/12/2019 09:28:02   Started               Service Processor Failover
02/12/2019 09:27:07   Started               None
02/12/2019 09:24:42   Standby               None
02/12/2019 09:21:25   Starting              None
02/12/2019 09:22:59   Stopped               None
02/12/2019 09:21:58   Not Available         Unknown
02/12/2019 09:09:45   Stopped               None
02/12/2019 09:07:53   Stopping              None
linux $

Configuration changes (processor, memory) of a managed system can be displayed with “lslparutil -r sys -m <managed-system> -s h –startyear 1970 –filter event_types = config_change“, or alternatively again with the LPAR tool:

linux $ ms history -c ms02
                                PROCUNIS              MEMORY
TIME                  CONFIGURABLE  AVAILABLE  CONFIGURABLE  AVAILABLE  FIRMWARE
04/16/2019 12:15:51      20.0          5.05       1048576       249344     25856
04/11/2019 11:17:39      20.0          5.25       1048576       253696     25600
04/02/2019 13:24:35      20.0          4.85       1048576       249344     25856
03/29/2019 14:29:14      20.0          5.25       1048576       253696     25600
03/15/2019 15:37:08      20.0          4.85       1048576       249344     25856
03/15/2019 11:36:57      20.0          4.95       1048576       249344     25856
...
linux $

The same information can also be displayed for LPARs.

The last status changes of an LPAR can be listed with “lpar history <lpar>“:

linux $ lpar history lpar02
TIME                  PRIMARY_STATE         DETAILED_STATE
04/17/2019 05:42:43   Started               None
04/17/2019 05:41:24   Waiting For Input     Open Firmware
04/16/2019 12:01:54   Started               None
04/16/2019 12:01:29   Stopped               None
02/15/2019 11:30:48   Stopped               None
02/01/2019 12:23:34   Not Available         Unknown
02/01/2019 12:22:50   Relocating            None
...

This corresponds to the command “lslparutil -r lpar -m ms03 -s h –startyear 1970 –filter event_types = state_change, lpar_names = lpar02” on the HMC command line.

From the output it can be seen that the LPAR has been relocated using LPM, was stopped and restartet and has been in Open Firmware mode.

And finally you can look at the last configuration changes of an LPAR using the command on the HMC CLI “lslparutil -r lpar -m ms03 -s h –startyear 1970 –filter event_types = config_change, lpar_names = lpar02“. The output of the LPAR tool is a bit clearer:

linux $ lpar history -c lpar02
TIME                  PROC_MODE  PROCS  PROCUNITS  SHARING  UNCAP_WEIGHT  PROCPOOL         MEM_MODE  MEM
04/23/2019 18:49:43   shared    1      0.7        uncap    10          DefaultPool      ded       4096
04/23/2019 18:49:17   shared    1      0.7        uncap    5           DefaultPool      ded       4096
04/23/2019 18:48:44   shared    1      0.3        uncap    5           DefaultPool      ded       4096
04/09/2019 08:04:25   shared    1      0.3        uncap    5           DefaultPool      ded       3072
03/14/2019 12:37:32   shared    1      0.1        uncap    5           DefaultPool      ded       3072
02/26/2019 09:34:28   shared    1      0.1        uncap    5           DefaultPool      ded       3072
02/20/2019 06:51:57   shared    1      0.3        uncap    5           DefaultPool      ded       3072
01/31/2019 08:12:58   shared    1      0.3        uncap    5           DefaultPool      ded       3072
..

From the output you can see that the number of processing units were changed several time, the uncapped weight was changed and the memory has been expanded.

Changes of the last two months are available at any time!