To determine what firmware is installed, we’ll use a couple of tools from IBM to help aid in that discovery.
- Inventory Scout -> installed on aix 5.3 systems and up
- Fix Level Recommendation Tool (FLRT) -> Used to determine vulnerability of system from installed filesets, instfix packages etc
Download a new catalog for invscout (saving to /home/padmin/)
- Available at: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/server/firmware/catalog.mic
- Change ownership and permissions: chmod 640 catalog.mic && chown padmin:staff catalog.mic #assuming on a vio server
- Replace old catalog file
- cp /var/adm/invscout/microcode/catalog.mic /var/adm/invscout/microcode/catalog.mic.old
- cp /home/padmin/catalog.mic /var/adm/invscout/microcode/catalog.mic
- Run Invscout:
invscout
...
Upload file: /var/adm/invscout/[hostname].mup
Report File: /var/adm/inscout/invs.mrp
Report File: /var/adm/invscout/invs.mrrup - Transfer the invscout “upload file” for microcode comparison to IBM using the MDS tool:
Fix Level Recommendation Tool
Navigate the the FLRT website at https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/flrt/
Go to the “scripting tools” section, and download the latest flrtvc script. Transfer the zip file, and extract it the target server.
chmod a+x flrtvc.ksh./flrtvc.ksh
Once you make the script executable, run it from the current directory. It will go out and download the required csv file from FLRT’s website. If the AIX system you are on doesn’t have public internet access, you can download it using a wget or curl command first, then transfer to the target machine.
Download with wget: wget -qO apar.csv http://www14.software.ibm.com/support/customercare/flrt/doc?page=aparCSV
The FLRT tool will indicate the fixes required, and provide the URLs to get said fix.