README.aix

Some notes for the AIX port
===========================

1. Known problems
-----------------

There are the following known problems on AIX:

1) Shared libraries / embedded perl

Up to (and including) net-snmp 5.4, configure forced a static build
on AIX which caused embedded Perl to be disabled as well.

Starting with net-snmp 5.4.1, we build shared libraries by default on AIX
(like on any other platform) using run-time linking. configure forces the
use of the required "-brtl" linker flag.

With net-snmp 5.5 the shared library build is broken again but the there is
no forced static build - use --disable-shared when building.

2) "grep: capacity exceeded" or "sed: Command line is too long" during configure

The version of "grep" shipped with AIX versions up to (and including) 5.1
has a known limitation of only supporting a maximum of 2048 characters per line.
This may cause a significant number of "grep: capacity exceeded" errors during
configure which breaks the build. See bug 1367794 for details. The fix is to 
either install GNU grep (and have it in PATH before the AIX grep) or to upgrade
to AIX 5.2 or later.

There's a similar issue with AIX /usr/bin/sed up to at least AIX 5.3 that 
causes a significant number of "sed: Command line is too long." errors during
configure. The fix is to install GNU sed.

3) nlist errors with 64-bit kernels

Accessing certain MIB objects on AIX 5.x machines running a 64-bit kernel will
trigger nlist/klookup errors. Starting from net-snmp 5.4, you can avoid those 
by using

   ./configure --without-kmem-usage ...
  

4) IPv6

Starting with net-snmp 5.4 you can enable the UDPIPv6 and TCPIPv6 transports 
on AIX 5.x:

   ./configure --enable-ipv6

There's no support for the IPv6 MIBs, though.

5) Compiler for Perl

In general, Perl modules need to be compiled with the same compiler and 
compiler options as Perl itself. configure detects some mismatches (gcc vs. 
vendor compiler), but treats different incarnations of the same compiler type
as similar. If your version of Perl (e.g. the one supplied by IBM for AIX 5.x)
has been compiled with cc_r on AIX, please make sure you also use CC=cc_r when
building net-snmp. Building with xlc in this case is known to fail (see bug
#1600099).


2. Patches
----------

You may want to have a look for existing AIX patches in our patches tracker
(http://www.net-snmp.org/patches/). If you can offer patches yourself to 
improve the AIX support, please submit them there.


3. Feedback
-----------

Please also see README and PORTING.

If you have questions, additional insights or (even better) patches regarding
net-snmp on AIX, please refer to the net-snmp mailing lists (see
http://www.net-snmp.org/lists).