Hi All,

There is a file with name "host.donotremove" present in the /etc
directoy of AIX 4.1.5, what is the purpose of that file.

I have looked at the resources availabel to me but do not find any
reference for the same.

Regards,
nurxb01

On Oct 4, 3:16 am, nurx...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> There is a file with name "host.donotremove" present in the /etc
> directoy of AIX 4.1.5, what is the purpose of that file.
>
> I have looked at the resources availabel to me but do not find any
> reference for the same.
>
> Regards,
> nurxb01

AIX 4.1.5 is so old that whoever built and maintained that system is
probably
long gone. When I started working, many years ago in mainframe land,
the system
programmers (think sysadmins) at my first job realized that every copy
they had of the
boot volume contained a library called sys1.utvlib. Nothing in any IBM
manuals
mentioned it. It contained a few COBOL programs. After scratching
their heads for weeks
and worrying they finally remembered that a few years before they had
had a co-op
student working for them and his initials were UTV. He created a
library file to store his
homework in and just followed the apparent naming convention of all
the other files
on the volume. The moral of the story is just because a file is in a
system location
doesn't mean it has anything to do with the OS. Take a look at what's
in the file. If you're
feeling lucky just rm it.

Regards,
Jim Lane

yes aix 4.1.5 is awfully old system and not much information is
availabale.

The contains of the file are as follows
################ START ( not a part of file ) #############

#
# If the yellow pages is running, this file is only consulted when
booting
#
# These lines added by the Suninstall Program
#
#
# Ip addresses 127 is reserved for loopback
127.0.0.1 localhost

#
# End of lines added by the Suninstall Program
################ END ( not a part of file ) #############


Though i dare not to remove it but for now i'm taking the files as one
of the not required files.
Thanks for the idea of unnecessary system files.

On Oct 9, 7:30 am, nurx...@gmail.com wrote:
> yes aix 4.1.5 is awfully old system and not much information is
> availabale.
>
> The contains of the file are as follows
> ################ START ( not a part of file ) #############
>
> #
> # If the yellow pages is running, this file is only consulted when
> booting
> #
> # These lines added by the Suninstall Program
> #
> #
> # Ip addresses 127 is reserved for loopback
> 127.0.0.1 localhost
>
> #
> # End of lines added by the Suninstall Program
> ################ END ( not a part of file ) #############
>
> Though i dare not to remove it but for now i'm taking the files as one
> of the not required files.
> Thanks for the idea of unnecessary system files.

Given the content as posted this looks like a file that has something
to do
with NIS. Perhaps you could grep around in /etc to se if there is
another file
containing the same or similar content. I'm speculating that this is
a
backup that somebody took way back when using an "imaginative" name.

-Jim