OpenVPN connections can be established under Mac OS X using the free software Tunnelblick - I kept in mind.

Using the most recent OS X version Mavericks this is a problem. The stable version of Tunnelblick is not ready yet for Mavericks which means that it is necessary to use beta version. Unfortunately those were not …

Beside Linux systems also Oracle Solaris hosts can be managed using Spacewalk and Red Hat Satellite - a cool feature that is often forgotten. (Update: since Spacewalk 2.2 from 07/16/2014 this function is "deprecated" which means that it might be removed in one of the following releases)

Bigger companies which …

If you want to create a screenshot of your HP-UX system and don't have GIMP installed, you can easily create a X dump using the xwd commandos. This X dump can be converted into a JPG file (or some other picture format) on another machine using XnView.

After executing the xwd command simply click on the window for the …

nslookup and ifconfig are two well-known tools for configuration the network of Unix/Linux hosts and checking whether DNS is working properly.

ifconfig was part of the 4.2BSD distribution in 1983 for the first time and quickly became the standard tool for network configuration - even commerical Unices like Solaris or …

Reading the World Wide Name (WWN) / World Wide Identifier (WWID) of a controller or a LUN is not always easy unter HP-UX - depending on the release. Especially under the older releases 11.11 and 11.23 additional tools are required to get the requested information - this is much easier under 11.31.

Controller …

There are plenty of changes that have to be made after a fresh HP-UX 11i v1/v2 installation because of missing pre-configuration. For example:

Name resolution

By default, the file /etc/nsswitch.conf doesn't exist and has to be created and modified using a template. If this isn't done, neither XF86 nor the sw utility …

A few days ago I wanted to use my HP C8000 workstation after a long time - but a defect changed my plans. Instead of showing the Boot Console Handler (BCH) the C8000 only presented a black screen. Even the serial interface was not working at all - no good sign.

I had a deepter look at the issue and unplugged all …

Depending on SSH client configuration and HP-UX release it is possible that the backspace control key (which is used for deleting erroneous inputs) is not working as expected.

1# mn^?^?man
2mn^?^?man: command not found

A possibility is to modify the configuraton of PuTTy - but this requires resetting the current …

Especially in older PA-RISC and Itanium machines HP Tachyon XL2 hostbus adapters can be found. If you want to know the associated HP part number (e.g. if you need to compare a support matrix) you might have used ioscan - and found nothing:

1# ioscan -funC fc
2Class     I  H/W Path  Driver S/W State   H/W Type …