Marcus Bennett Inside the IBM RISC System/6000 Marcus Bennett Inside the IBM RISC System/6000 McGRAW -HILL BOOK COMPANY London • New York • St Louis • San Francisco -Auckland Bogota • Caracas • Lisbon • Madrid • Mexico Milan • Montreal • New Delhi • Panama • Paris • San Juan Sao Paulo • Singapore • Sydney • Tokyo • Toronto Published by McGRAW-HILL Book Company Europe Shoppenhangers Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 2QL, England Tel 0628 23432; Fax 0628 770224 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Bennett, Marcus Inside the IBM RISC System/6000 I. Title 004.2 ISBN 0-07-707688-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bennett, Marcus Inside the IBM RISC System/6000 / Marcus Bennett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-07-707688-5 1. IBM RISC System/6000 computers. I. Title. QA76.8.125975B45 1993 004.165-dc20 93-13494 CIP Copyright © 1994 McGraw-Hill International (UK) Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of McGraw-Hill International (UK) Limited, with the exception of material entered and executed on a computer system for the reader's own use. 1234 CUP 9654 Typeset by Datix International Limited, Bungay, Suffolk and printed and bound in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge Contents Acknowledgements ix Preface xi Trademarks xv Conventions xvii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Open systems 1 2 The IBM RISC System/6000 family 6 2.1 RISC system family outline 6 2.2 Ordering a complete system 10 3 AIX facilities 14 3.1 How does the IBM RISC System/6000 boot? 14 3.2 The object data manager 18 3.3 Printing 22 3.4 Real-time computing 26 3.5 International language support 30 4 RISC technology 37 4.1 Register model 38 4.2 Virtual memory addressing 40 4.3 Understanding caches 42 4.4 CPU walkthru 44 4.5 Virtual memory management 46 4.6 Compiler design 47 5 Programming environments 53 5.1 Program management 53 5.2 Computer-aided software engineering 55 5.3 Communication programming interfaces 58 5.4 Device drivers 61 5.5 Dynamic linking 67 5.6 Debuggers 73 5.7 Tracing 77 6 End user interfaces 81 6.1 X-Windows and Motif 81 6.2 Silicon Graphics GL 97 v vi Contents 6.3 Display PostScript 6.4 graPHIGS and PEX 6.5 AlXwindows Desktop 6.6 Open Look and XView 6.7 Professional Graphics Tools 7 Information strategy 7.1 Documentation strategy 7.2 InfoExplorer 7.3 InfoCrafter 7.4 BookManager 7.5 IBM information sources 7.6 Electronic customer support 7.7 IBM training 8 New technology 8.1 Serial link disk technology 8.2 The IBM X-station 150 8.3 IBM diskless workstations 8.4 Optical disk and digital tape technology 8.5 MicroChannel 8.6 Optical networking 8.7 High-performance graphics 8.8 The POWER visualization system 8.9 Parallel computing 9 Systems administration 9.1 Systems management interface tool 9.2 Software installation 9.3 Performance management 10 Storage 10.1 Benefits of the journalled filesystem 10.2 Filesystem organization 10.3 The traditional UNIX physical filesystem 10.4 The AIX physical filesystem 10.5 The persistent storage manager 10.6 Logical volume manager characteristics 11 DOS 11.1 DOS emulation on the IBM RISC System/6000 11.2 NetWare for AIX 11.3 AIX access for DOS users 11.4 TCP/IP for DOS 11.5 X-Windows servers for PC users 12 Networking 12.1 Basic networking utilities. 12.2 TCP/IP 12.3 Directory and file sharing 12.4 High availability Contents VII 12.5 Network Computing System 216 12.6 Network management 222 12.7 The OSF distributed computing environment 225 13 The IBM bridge 228 13.1 Fundamentals 228 13.2 What is an IBM mainframe? 231 13.3 IBM mainframe communications 234 13.4 IBM mainframe terminal emulation 234 13.5 AIX to IBM mainframe programming interfaces 237 13.6 What is an IBM AS/400? 239 13.7 AIX SNA transaction programs 241 13.8 Network management 246 14 Security 249 14.1 Complying with security standards 249 14.2 Physical security 251 14.3 Identification and authentication 251 14.4 The trusted computer base 253 14.5 Modifications to password storage 253 14.6 Limiting user access 254 14.7 Discretionary access control 254 14.8 Trusted communication path 256 14.9 Mandatory access control 256 14.10 Accounting 256 14.11 Auditing 257 14.12 Checking programs 258 15 Diagnostics 260 15.1 Hardware diagnostics 261 15.2 Software diagnostics 261 15.3 Error logging 262 15.4 Dump and crash 263 15.5 The IBM support system 264 16 Standards and performance 269 16.1 Vendor standards 269 16.2 US government standards: FIPS and NIST 276 16.3 US standards bodies 276 16.4 Graphics bodies and standards 279 16.5 Performance standards 279 16.6 Competitive summary 284 17 A change of attitude 286 17.1 Market driven for customer satisfaction 287 17.2 IBM terms and conditions 287 17.3 The IBM value added reseller 290 17.4 IBM companies 290 17.5 Vendor alliances 291 17.6 OEM marketing 294 17.7 Future developments 295 17.8 Summary 295 viii Contents Appendices 296 1 The history of UNIX and IBM's involvement 296 2 IBM hard disk interfaces 311 3 Bibliography and further information 316 4 Abbreviations 326 5 Glossary 333 Index 338 Acknowledgements I am grateful to the following people without whose patience, help and contribu- tions this book would not have been possible: Raymond Wordsworth Bennett, for taking the trouble to proofread this work continually; Angela Christi, for help with the proofreading and semantics ; Johnny Lauridsen, IBM Denmark, for NCS programs and APPC sections; Liz Lewis, IBM UK, for accounting, auditing and superusers sections; Tim Hayashi, IBM Japan, for advice and guidance regarding NLS; Nelson Strother, IBM Hawthorne, NY, USA, for technically sharpening this work; Valerie Sangwine, IBM UK Press and Publicity for colour slides; and Jim McArdle, IBM Test Equipment Engineering, USA, for his continued proofreading. The following figures require acknowledgement: Figs. 2.1, 2.2, 8.6, 8.7 and Al.1-Valerie Sangwine, IBM Press and Publicity; Fig. 8.1-IBM Press and Publicity; Fig. 12.7-Johnny Lauridsen and Marcus Bennett; Fig. 12.8, 12.9, 13.6 and 13.7-Johnny Lauridsen; Fig. 13.2-Ian Stimpson; Fig. 14.4-Liz Lewis. All other figures provided by Marcus Bennett. ix Preface Development of UNIX-based systems has come a long way in the last 10 years. UNIX systems today are designed to be of use in ordinary offices in the world of commerce and industry generally. IBM is committed to producing high-quality UNIX computer systems such as the IBM RISC System/6000 to meet today's needs. In 1978 (about five years before IBM launched its first UNIX computer) I remember putting the finishing touches to my very first personal UNIX computer system. It was the result of a great amount of hard work. Although this system still works today, it bears little similarity to the nineties generation of UNIX workstation and is considerably removed from the IBM RISC System/6000 which is the subject of this text. This book is intended to cover a wide audience. If you feel at one with any of the categories listed below then I am confident that you will find it worthwhile reading. If you are part of a corporate computing department you will probably have had experience of IBM's mainframe computing systems. This book will show how and why IBM is embracing the open systems marketplace with the IBM RISC System/6000. You will see how IBM has tried to ensure that the RISC system integrates well into both traditional IBM and UNIX environments. To this end we will discuss the range of IBM systems network architecture (SNA) and UNIX TCP/IP communications options available for the IBM RISC System/6000. If you work within a computer vendor you may often be frustrated by the inaccuracy of information sometimes reported by the media. What has been the true picture of IBM's RISC system development to date? This publication discusses the history behind IBM's involvement with UNIX to enable you to understand the changing times at IBM that have culminated in the IBM RISC System/6000. Many users of today's computer systems are personal computer users. IBM and Microsoft DOS have their place on over 40 million desktops worldwide. DOS is, and will continue to be, a powerful force in the PC and workstation market of the future. This book will show how IBM provides DOS integration across its entire range of UNIX platforms and how close the RISC system xi xii Preface comes to providing users with `a better DOS than DOS'. For the established DOS user we will also cover tools that enable DOS to link to the RISC system. If you are an established UNIX developer or architect you will be interested in the many in-depth technical sections in this book. What is MicroChannel, how good is it technically, is it IBM's future direction? Why does IBM refer to the RISC system as second-generation RISC? How does the RISC system address the challenges of the nineties generation of UNIX systems in terms of security or usability? Does the RISC system provide the latest facilities such as optical storage, reliable filesystems and networking? These topics are covered in depth.