Open Source software and HP-UX

HP-UX is a great OS and the default installation provides a plethora of tools for any Unix sysadmin but of course, like almost every operative system, it can improved with third-party OpenSource software

This is a short list of the packages I can’t live without, all of them can be obtained at the Porting And Archive Centre for HP-UX or the HP-UX 11i Internet Express collection. The packages included in the Internet Express collection are fully supported and tested by HP.

• Bash shell. The best Unix shell, at least for me, powerful and highly customizable.
• GNU coreutils. Provides with GNU version of many Unix commands, what can I say? I like the GNU ls colored output x-)

• lsof How can any sysadmin live without lsof?
• sudo Indispensable to allow scripts or users run certain commands as root or any other user.
• unzip It’s not that I use it but every time I set up a new server to run Oracle the database people ask for it so I got used to install it.
• tcpdump Don’t install it by default on my servers but I like to have the depot around, just in case.
• tusc God bless Chris Bertin!
• vim Not on my production servers but I like to have VI Improved installed on my management node, usually the Ignite-UX server, where I store all my scripts and with ssh (public key authentication) access to all the nodes.

Of course all of them have dependencies that have to be met, however with the exception of vim, which have tons of them, there aren’t too much.

And that’s all folks, which OpenSource package do you use in your HP-UX boxes? Please comment :-)

Juanma.