This chapter provides an overview of SMIT. The basic tasks that are possible using SMIT are described. This section does not cover all the aspects of SMIT. See the chapter titled "System Management Interface Tool" in System Management Guide for AIX Version 3.2 for further details of SMIT.
The System Management Interface Tool (SMIT) is the primary tool for managing the AIX V3 system. The SMIT facility presents a menu based, task oriented interface to the commands required to manage the system. SMIT steps you through the desired task with the use of menus, selectors and dialogs. SMIT frees the user from the details of complex command syntax, valid parameter values, and system command spelling. In addition, SMIT creates log files which contains the commands used in all the menus during SMIT execution. These logs can be used to duplicate system configuration or to learn how to use specific commands. The SMIT facility runs in two interfaces, ASCII (non-graphical) or AIXwindows* (graphical).
In order to understand the tasks that can be performed using SMIT, enter the
command smit -C or smitty. Both of these
commands start SMIT in ASCII interface. You should get a
screen which looks like the following:
The top menu titled System Management provides the
following option menus to perform the tasks given in the following list:
The SMIT user navigates through a hierarchy of menus and name select screens
to reach dialog screens, where values are supplied to System Management
attributes.
When SMIT is invoked with the command smit, the system will check
your terminal type and bring up the motif version if you are in a windows
environment or the ASCII version if you are on an ASCII terminal. Use the
command smit -C or smitty to start ASCII version of SMIT in
an AIX window. However, the window must be defined at least 80 columns by 25
rows to properly execute.
The syntax for smit is as follows:
The explanation for some of the flags follows.
Some examples using the smit command follow:
This command is an example using a FastPath parameter. The smit
command followed by the FastPath parameter chuser brings you directly
to the menu Change User Attributes, which guides you through changing the
characteristics of a user.
The smit.script file can be edited to create slight variations in the
configuration commands, or to use only subsets of commands. Save smit.script
file to a different file name if you want to use it later for any purpose.
SMIT creates two files: the smit.script file and the
smit.log file.
Invoking the smit command with the -s PathName flag saves
the smit.script file in the file specified by the PathName parameter.
If the -s flag is not specified, the script information is saved in the
$HOME/smit.script file.
Invoking the smit command with the -l PathName flag saves
the smit.log file in the file specified by the PathName parameter. If
the -l flag is not specified, the log information is recorded in the
$HOME/smit.log file.
You must have write permission on the directory in which you have requested
the smit files to be written or the smit.script file and smit.log file are not
created. You must also have write permission on both smit.script and smit.log
files or these files aren't updated.
SMIT does not overwrite the smit.log file or the smit.script file. These
files are appended when possible.
The smit.script file automatically records the commands with the command
flags and parameters used. The smit.script file can be used as an executable
shell script to duplicate system configuration. The smit command displays the top level of the overall System
Management hierarchy if you do not use the FastPath parameter. To
enter the menu at lower levels, use the FastPath parameter. All
commands run by SMIT can be used as FastPaths. The FastPath parameter
will assist you as you become familiar with the commands. For example, you can
enter: smit chuser to go directly to the dialogue from which you can
change user characteristics.
At any time you can type the Image key (F8 function key in SMIT) to
know the current FastPath of the current menu in SMIT. You
can also look at the smit.log file that contains the log of the
FastPath parameters corresponding to the different menus of
SMIT you went through.
SMIT requires access to the following files: The commands generated by SMIT work with the ODM database. Every time the
Enter key or a function key is pressed, SMIT looks into ODM to search
information or to update information for all tasks. Via SMIT, ODM stores and
maintains system data as objects with associated characteristics.
The four following files are ODM database files that contain information
about menus and commands SMIT uses for System Management tasks: The user can customize the appearance of all types of screens. See the types
of the screen in Elements of SMIT. The user also can add
functionality by adding new instances in the ODM. It can be useful to add your
application in the SMIT menus.
To know more about the use of SMIT you can refer to the
publications: AIX General Concepts and Procedures for RISC System/6000
and Getting Started: Using IBM RISC System/6000.
System Management
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
Software Installation & Maintenance
Devices
Physical & Logical Storage
Security & Users
Diskless Workstation Management & Installation
Communications Applications and Services
Spooler (Print Jobs)
Problem Determination
Performance & Resource Scheduling
System Environments
Processes & Subsystems
Applications
Using SMIT (information only)
F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel F8=Image
F9=Shell F10=Exit Enter=Do
Figure: Example of SMIT Top Menu
Elements of SMIT
SMIT Command
smit [ -C | -M ] [ -D ] [ -f ]
[ -h ] [ -l PathName ] [ -o PathName ]
[ -s PathName ] [ -t ] [ -v ] [ [ -m | -n | -d ] FastPath ]
[ -X ] [ -x ]
Examples of Use of SMIT
chmod +x smit.script
Then, to duplicate your configuration, enter: smit.script.
**** NOTE: ****
SMIT runs commands under the Korn shell (/usr/bin/ksh). Some command strings
in the smit.script file may require this environment to run correctly. You can
add the line:
#!/bin/ksh
at the top of the smit.script file before you run it, to force the Korn Shell
environment during the execution of the script.
Files Created by SMIT
SMIT creates the smit.log file, which contains additional detailed information
that can be used by programmers in extending the SMIT system. It also contains
the value of the different FastPath parameters that you can use to directly
access the menus you have selected in SMIT, and the title of these associated
menus. At last, it contains the output screens of SMIT. It can be very
interesting to look at this file when an installation through SMIT has failed,
in order to find the accurate reason of the failure, if you
just didn't notice it at installation time.
SMIT Fastpath
Files Needed by SMIT
sm_menu_opt ODM database
sm_name_hdr ODM database
sm_cmd_hdr ODM database
sm_cmd_opt ODM database
smit.log SMIT log file
smit.script SMIT script file
/usr/lpp/info/$LANG InfoExplorer
/usr/lpp/msg/$LANG/smit.cat Message Catalog
**** NOTE: ****
If any of these files are corrupt or exist on an NFS server and that server
goes down, SMIT may hang.
SMIT and Object Data Manager (ODM)
sm_menu_opt (SMIT Menu) Object Class
sm_name_hdr (SMIT Selection Header) Object Class
sm_cmd_hdr (SMIT Dialog Header) Object Class
sm_cmd_opt (SMIT Dialog/Selector Command) Option Object Class
SMIT builds these commands/menus as needed from this database, therefore, menus
may look slightly different based upon how you accessed the menu or based upon
what products are installed on the machine. It means that the installation of a
specific product may bring new menus in SMIT. An update may also modify some
SMIT menus.
Publications