Introduction

As you know, AIX® has a vast array of commands that enable you to do a multitude
of tasks. Depending on what you need to accomplish, you use only a certain subset of
these commands. These subsets differ from user to user and from need to need.
However, there are a few core commands that you commonly use. You need these
commands either to answer your own questions or to provide answers to the queries
of the support professionals.

In this article, I'll discuss some of these core commands. The intent is to provide a list
that you can use as a ready reference. While the behavior of these commands should
be identical in all releases of AIX, they have been only tested under AIX 5.3.

Note:
The bootinfo command discussed in the following paragraphs is NOT a user-level
command and is NOT supported in AIX 4.2 or later.
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Commands

Kernel

How would I
know if I am
running a 32-
bit kernel or
64-bit
kernel?

To display if
the kernel is
32-bit enabled
or 64-bit
enabled, type:

bootinfo -K

How do I
know if I am
running a
uniprocessor
kernel or a
multiprocess
or kernel?

/unix is a
symbolic link
to the booted
kernel. To
find out what
kernel mode is
running, enter
ls -l /unix
and see what
file /unix it
links to. The
following are
the three
possible
outputs from
the ls -l
/unix
command and
their
corresponding