AIX Tip of the Week: AIX Freeware Web Sites

Audience: AIX Users and Administrators

Date: September 10, 1999

One of the many benefits of Unix is the wide choice of freeware applications and utilities. The following freeware web sites are dedicated to AIX:

http://www-frec.bull.com/cgi-bin/list_dir.cgi/download/out/
http://www-frec.bull.com/ospbuhp.htm
http://aixpdslib.seas.ucla.edu

At the bottom of this page is a partial list describing some of the tools. As a starting point, I would suggest the following packages:

• monitor - Performance monitoring tool. Provides a full screen update important system performance metrics (CPU, disk, memory, network).
• perl - Text extraction and manipulation tool. I use Perl as a replacement for shell scripts. It's more powerful, and easier to use.
• apache - Web server. I use web technology to create systems administration scripts, and communicate with end users.
• zip - Creates PKZIP compatible archives. I use zip to package files for exchange between AIX and Windows.
• samba - File and print serving for Windows.

Overview of downloadable utilities

This collection contains over 130 Freeware or Shareware LPPs, each representing a different utility, written by a different person or group and that is supposed to solve a different problem.

Obviously not all utilities apply to all systems. The basic minimum is probably freeware.monitor.rte and freeware.lsof.rte, however knowledgeable users would probably insist that

• freeware.gnu.gzip.rte
• freeware.gnu.wget.rte
• freeware.mtools.rte
• freeware.SAMBA.rte
• freeware.aix.tools.rte

This page tries to list the most useful utilities, and show what sort of users would be most lightly to need them. The packages on the CD-Rom that would typically be useful on a large proportion of client sites have been split up into different categories. Please remember that this division is to help give a clear description of the environment where a particular package may be useful, but does not imply any restriction and the different categories are not visible during the installation of the packages.

1. Workgroup Server Packages
   software packages that would typically be used to provide services to a group of users or to implement a small application.
2. Administrative Tools
   Tools that would usually be of direct use to system administrators. Obviously system administrators are allowed to use all the tools appropriate to end-users too.
3. End-User Tools
   Tools that would be directly useful to real live users with shell access to the system.
4. Development Tools
   Packages that would typically only be used for software development tasks.

Workgroup Server Packages

• SAMBA v2.0.0, SMB client and server for Unix
  Samba is a freeware utility that allows PC users to access Unix Disk and printer resources without having to install NFS on the PC.
  Commercial equivalent: AS/U, Advanced Server for Unix, implements the complete Networking interface of WindowsNT v4.0
• Apache v1.3.4, Apache HTTP server
  Apache is a freeware Web server, well supported in the Freeware world. It can integrate very closely with perl (see later) to provide stable high-performance applications.
• MySQL v3.22.14, MySQL SQL database server
  MySQL is a multi-thread SQL Database. It can be directly accessed from perl (see later) through the perl Data-Base Interface (DBI) driver.
• perl v5.5.2, PERL scripting language
  The Perl scripting language is widely used to write CGI programs for Web servers. It is also used to perform other administrative tasks. Perl is rapidly becoming the preferred scripting language for all applications, since it is available on a wide range of platforms (Unix, Mac, Windows).
• Squid v1.1.20, Squid Web Proxy Server
  Squid is a high-performance caching web-proxy server
• ftpweblog v1.0.2, Web and FTP server statistics package
  Ftpweblog generates graphical statistics of web server usage. It is easy to use and gives good, intelligent analysis of who is accessing what on the web server.
• wget v1.5.3, Wget, retrieve files from the World Wide Web
  wget is a powerful tool that can download pages (or entire servers) from the Web. It is typically used to "mirror" a server or part of a server. Wget understands both http and ftp URLs, and can work through "Web" or "SOCKS" proxy servers.
• weblint v1.20, Lint program for HTML
  weblint can be used to check HTML documents for syntax errors. It should be used when HTML documents are modified manually.

Administrative Tools

• lsof v4.38, List Open Files
  LSOF is an absolute essential utility on any modern Unix. Lsof has two "life-saving" uses since it can answer two difficult questions:
  • who is using a filesystem? To unmount a filesystem under Unix, all the users must stop using it. However it is often difficult to identify the user who has left a process running in that filesystem. Lsof allows the process still using any disk resource to be immediately identified.
  • What processes are using the TCP-IP stack? When debugging a network problem it is often vital to be able to analyze what processes are actively using the TCP-IP stack. Lsof can identify them quickly and easily.
• monitor v2.1.5, Performance Monitor Program
  Monitor is another "life-saving" utility. It allows all the major performance indicators to be displayed simultaneously on a simple ASCII screen (or xterm). Monitor combines the information available from many standard tools (vmstat, iostat, netstat, and more) to provide an immediate view of system performance. Monitor can also be executed by non-root users.
• tidysys v2.2.1, system maintenance tool

On a normal Unix system, there are files that accumulate under /tmp, log files must occasionly be reduced in size, etc.. Tidysys allows all the standard AIX files that need to be maintained in this way to be kept to a reasonable size. In addition log files from add-on products can also be maintained using tidysys.
• AIX Tools v1.5.1, Collection of simple command-line tools
  the LPP freeware.aix.tools.rte contains a range of small utilities from different sources
  • whichlpp Shows which LPP delivered a file
  • pstree displays processes in a tree format
  • ll equivalent to ls -l
  • ldd lists the shared library dependencies of a program, better than dump -H
  • xd hexadecimal dump utility, better than od -x
  • chpass "Batch" password modification program
  • ... and more, look in /usr/local/lib/tools
• Satan v2.0.1, Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks

Satan allows Unix machines on a network or subnetwork to be "probed" for externally visible security problems. It is a powerful and easy-to-use tool, recently updated to conform with ITCS201 recommendations. All externally-visible Unix machines should be tested with Satan several times a year.
Commercial equivalent: Internet Security Scanner, see http://www.iss.com/
• COPS v1.0.4, Security Checker

COPS looks for security problems on the machine where it is installed and executed. It allows an administrator to verify that no configuration errors have been made that could allow a local user to become super-user. All externally-visible Unix machines should be tested with COPS once a month.
• TIGER v2.2.3.0, Unix security checker

tiger performs essentially the same job as COPS. Both can be installed and used to double-check results.
• Crack v5.0, or Jonn v1.5, Password Cracking tools
  Crack verifies that the passwords for user logins (including root) are "difficult" to guess. Crack is mostly used on machines that host many user accounts, to verify that the users always choose passwords that do not contain their name, etc..
  John the Ripper is similar to Crack, but uses more recent and powerful algorithms.

End-User Tools

• gzip v1.2.4, GZIP compression and decompression tools
  Gzip has become the default compression tool on the internet.
• screen v3.7.4, ASCII Multi-Screen Utility

Screen is a miracle-tool if you use "dumb" ASCII terminals. Screen allows you to have several applications running on the same terminal, each thinking it controls a real terminal completely. The user can switch from one application to the other. Thus it is possible to use "vi" in one screen, perform a backup in another, be telneted to another machine in a third, etc..
• mtools v3.9.1, Utilities to access DOS disks in Unix

Mtools is an absolute necessity if you exchange diskettes with PC users. Mtools provide commands with the same names and syntax as standard DOS commands, however the names of the mtools commands are preceded with an "m" (mcopy instead of copy, mdir instead of dir, etc..).
• xpdf v0.8, PDF Display utility for X11
  (smaller and faster than acrobat_reader)
• pine v4.05, Pine user-friendly email utility

pine is a powerful email utility, that is nevertheless easy-to use. Pine is an ASCII application, it is quick, and it used a special (easy) text editor to prepare mail messages. Pine is fully MIME-compliant, and text attachements can be displayed directly.
• unzip v5.32, Unzip, archiving and compression tool
• zip v2.2.0, Zip - Compression and file packing utility
  zip and unzip allow "zipfiles" (widely used on PCs) to be created and unziped under Unix. The zipfiles created by zip are compatible with the PKZIP utility on a PC.
• xpaint v2.5.5, Image editing tool
  Xpaint is a good tool for generating and editing imaged (although "PaintShopPro" on a PC is better). Xpaint also allows images to be converted from one format to another (so does "xv", see later).
• xv v3.10.1, XV image viewer
  XView is a shareware utility, that provides powerful image viewing tools. Xview can be used to capture images on the screen, which can then be edited and saved to disk in several formats.

Development Tools

• EGCS v1.1.1, GNU C Compiler
  GCC, the GNU C and C++ freeware compilers are probably the most widely-used compilers in the world, and are a real reference for "portability". The GNU C compiler is a fully ANSI-C compliant compiler. Every Unix machine traditionally has a C compiler, but not everybody needs a "commercial" product. The GNU C compiler gives the basic functionality for users who are not producing important software applications.
  Commercial Equivalent: IBM's XLC compiler produces smaller and faster binaries than GNU C, and also follows the evolutions of the operating system and the hardware more closely.
• TCL/TK v8.0, TCL Scripting language tools
• mklpp v1.2.3, Light-LPP generation tool
  MKLPP is the tool used to generate all the freeware LPPs on the CDROM. Mklpp can be used to quickly and easily generate professional installation images for any AIX 4 machine. It can be used for the in-house deployment of an application or to package a commercial application for easy installation by your customers.