Network Installation Management Guide and Reference

Appendix D. NIM Compatibility and Limitations

This section contains information about compatibility and limitations between AIX 4.1 and AIX 4.2 (and later).

Operations

showlog	Not supported on AIX 4.1 SPOT or machine targets.
showres	Not supported on AIX 4.1 SPOT or machine targets.
lppchk	Not supported on AIX 4.1 SPOT or machine targets.
maint_boot	Cannot use an AIX 4.1 SPOT as the SPOT resource when booting a client machine.

Resources

The resolv_conf resource is not supported when allocated to an AIX 4.1 machine target.

Resources served from an AIX 4.1 client cannot be used when performing operations on machine groups.

Creating a system backup image while defining a mksysb resource is not supported when using an AIX 4.1 client as the source of the backup.

Default Routes

Default routes cannot be used to install an AIX 4.1 machine from an AIX 4.2 (and later) master, unless APAR IX59393 is installed in the AIX 4.1 SPOT used for the installation.

Due to changes in the list of filesets to copy for lpp_sources, a later version lpp_source cannot be served from a NIM master running an earlier version of the operating system. An Authorized Program Analysis Report (APAR) may be applied to the AIX 4.1 NIM master to allow this function. Apply APAR IX59032 to the AIX 4.1 NIM master.

Due to kernel changes in AIX, a SPOT cannot be created at a level of AIX that is higher than the level of AIX installed on the server of the SPOT. For example, an AIX 4.1 NIM master cannot serve an AIX 4.2 (and later) SPOT. In order to have an AIX 4.2 (and later) SPOT in an environment where the NIM master is running AIX 4.1, a client may be installed with AIX 4.2 (and later), and it can serve the AIX 4.2 (and later) SPOT. For backwards compatibility, an AIX 4.2 (and later) master may serve AIX 4.1 lpp_source and spot resources.

Note: An older release cannot serve the lpp_source of a later release.

Memory Requirements for AIX 5.1

Machines must have at least 64 MB of memory in order to run AIX 5.1.

Remote Dump over ISA Ethernet

Remote dump is not supported over ISA ethernet. Therefore, an error will occur under either of these conditions:

booting a diskless NIM client over ISA ethernet with a dump resource allocated.
issuing the sysdumpdev command with a remote dump location specified as the argument.

This is the error message you will receive:

Cannot set primary dump device host:/location
Operation not supported on socket where host:/location is the remote location at which you are attempting to set the dump device.

LAN SCSI Adapter

On clients using a LAN SCSI adapter to access a NIM server it is not possible to declare the client with the niminit command.

It is possible to work around this problem by creating the NIM object that describes the client machine on the NIM server. This is done using the following command:

nim -o define