IBM has taken an active role in free and open source software (FOSS), in particular for Linux running on their Power servers. All modern day Power servers are now capable of running many different Linux distributions natively. Great, but what about the classic AIX operating system that still runs on so much IBM hardware?

Over the last couple of decades, IBM has taken steps to build open support into AIX [1]. The AIX Toolbox for Open Source Software [2] is an IBM site that serves as the primary source of GNU and open source tool packages ported to the AIX environment. The focus of this article is to look at the most efficient method of managing FOSS on AIX with the DNF package manager.

AIX Toolbox

Today more than 400 open source packages are available for download at the IBM hosted repository (Figure 1). The packages are kept current, with an update provided annually for most packages.

Figure 1: The IBM AIX Toolbox website for open source software.

Any security vulnerabilities are addressed, and fixes are provided in a timely fashion. The AIX Toolbox contains many popular and useful development packages, such as languages, compilers, and debuggers. Many foundational packages are also available, such as MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Apache, and more.

The AIX Toolbox contains a wide variety of third-party open source tools that can be installed on AIX by the RPM package manager (refer to the AIX Toolbox website [2] for more information). However, newer, more advanced tools are available to assist administrators with managing open source software (OSS) on AIX.

FOSS Management on AIX

By default, the rpm command is available on AIX (with the rpm.rte AIX fileset) to install, query, verify, and manage software packages, making it an essential tool for system administrators working with FOSS. However, rpm alone does not support automatic installation of prerequisites and does not automatically expand filesystems.

DNF, on the other hand, helps with resolving RPM dependencies and prerequisites, but it's not installed with AIX by default, so I'll start with a close look at how you can install DNF on AIX. Then, I'll discuss how you can create and manage local DNF repositories, and I'll conclude by showing you an example of how to install a FOSS application on AIX with DNF.

DNF on AIX

DNF is an open source command-line package management utility for installing, removing, querying, and managing RPM packages. DNF automatically determines dependencies for the packages being updated or installed and will fetch the dependent packages and install them with the requested packages. The tool helps you avoid the well-known and feared RPM "dependency hell" problem [3]. DNF works with an existing software repository that contains RPM packages. The repository can be accessed locally or over a network. It's available to install on AIX versions 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3. The AIX Toolbox provides the required DNF install packages. I should mention that, yes, YUM was (is) also available on AIX; however, it's not supported on AIX 7.3 or later, so my advice for AIX is to stick with DNF, not YUM.

Before attempting to install DNF on AIX, you should first check that your system meets the minimum requirements. DNF operates on AIX 7.1 TL5 and later versions. The openssl fileset, version 1.1.X.X (or higher), must be installed. Ideally you'll have the latest version on your system. You must meet some disk space requirements for installing DNF, as well: at least 512MB of free space available in /tmp, /opt, and /var. If necessary, increase the amount of free disk space in each filesystem as needed before attempting installation.

If you miss some of the prerequisites, the DNF install script checks the system during installation and displays a message if any prerequisites are not met. Assuming you are ready to go, DNF can be installed directly from the Internet with a script available from the AIX Toolbox.