Edit: I am not sure this has gotten any easier.
Originally posted June 5, 2012 on AIXchange
I recently worked with a customer whose environment is kind of interesting. Even though Linux is prevalent and he has a background of running Windows servers on VMware, there’s little — let’s call it traditional — UNIX hardware.
This customer, however, just installed AIX on Power for the first time, and it was enlightening to hear his perspective on this leading-edge technology.
Given his long-term use of VMware, he found the virtualization concepts easy enough to grasp. On the other hand, installation and navigation of the HMC and AIX were new ground.
One of the first stumbling blocks came once we’d installed the VIO server. We were navigating around in the Korn shell after accepting all of the license agreements on the command line. Of course I do this all the time, so it’s second nature to me. That’s why I didn’t have a good answer when he wondered why better command history navigation and command completion options haven’t been implemented.
There were little annoyances. His term type wasn’t set properly. Sometimes the function keys worked, sometimes not. He had to manually type stty erase ^? to get his backspace key to work. Another source of frustration was that the F4 key would provide a pick list in smitty — sometimes. And sometimes not. These little annoyances are easy to work around, provided you’ve been doing it for a while.
When I showed him how to use set –o vi and then navigate the command line like a vi session, I received a look of sheer incredulity. He asked why on earth he should he need to know this obscure stuff? Couldn’t AIX just allow users to get their command history via the up arrow, as DOS 5 and DOSKEY users have been doing for years? He noted that every other command line he uses, including Cisco’s IOS, allows him to use the up arrow to go through his shell history and serves as tab completion when he enters commands.
I told him he could load bash and others shells onto AIX for a more user-friendly command line experience. Of course, that doesn’t help him when he’s doing work as root or padmin using the Korn shell.
Some of his critiques were actually pretty funny. For instance, when I informed him that the esc-k combination allows him to go back in his shell history and edit previous commands, he jokingly told me that “esc k” in Spanish means “What did I just type?” (As que — pronounced “k” in Spanish — means “what” in English, I can see how he would make that leap.)
Other words he used to describe the AIX interface included “antiquated,” “primitive” and “painful.” He told me it wasn’t 1982 anymore. Then he suggested that perhaps this interface would pass for modern in North Korea.
Despite his light-hearteded comments, the customer clearly wasn’t impressed with the out-of-the-box Korn shell command line experience. Although we are able to clean some of the issues up with entries in our .profile, it left me wondering about improvements that could be made to the command line.
We moved on to loading operating systems, virtual Ethernet, virtual storage and virtual optical devices. The complaining continued. Once I got to the NIM server — or, as he called it, “the secret of nimh server” — the customer had had enough for the day.
I accepted all his comments with a grain of salt. Even for IT pros, learning something new can be daunting. Since that first day he’s gotten more comfortable with the AIX environment. The rate of complaints has slowed.
But it’s interesting to think about. Imagine you didn’t have your years of experience with the command line and try to see things with fresh eyes. What kinds of crazy things do we do on a daily basis that we accept as perfectly normal? Does it extend beyond the command line? Are there features and functions in AIX that would turn off users who don’t know the platform? Could any or all of these things truly be a barrier that keeps some customers from adopting AIX and Power solutions? Please share your thoughts in Comments.