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Stuck trying to install Firefox on AIX 5.3, help appreciated

wowbobwow

wowbobwow

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2015
Messages
113
Location
Bay Area, California
Hi all,

Several years ago I received an RS/6000 43p in a trade for some vintage Apple stuff. I’ve never used a non-Apple PowerPC system before so I’m pretty excited to dive in and see what AIX is like. This machine is a 250MHz model and was missing its hard drive when I got it, so I recently picked up a “new old stock” IBM 72GB SCSI drive and an 80-to-68-pin SCSI adapter and it was recognized. I also found a set of AIX 5.3 installation ISO’s and got those burned, along with an ISO for Firefox 3.5.8 (what I understand to be the last version compatible with AIX 5.3).

On my first attempt, I got the machine booted from the AIX installer CD and chose a “default” installation. That took about 90 minutes and worked fine, but when I attempted to install Firefox, I got a Failure error reading:

Code: 
MISSING REQUISITES: The following filesets are required by one or more of the selected filesets listed above. They are not currently installed and could not be found on the installation media.

xlC.aix50.rte 10.1.0.0

# Base Level Fileset

I figured maybe I skipped something in the OS install process, so yesterday I blew away my first attempt and re-installed AIX with *all* options enabled. This process took over 9 hours(!) and involved swapping the CD’s numerous times… but I still get the same error when I attempt to install Firefox.

Any idea what I’m doing wrong here? I’m willing to reinstall the OS again if necessary, I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Thanks for any tips!
 
That's the C++ runtime environment. The version 10.1 as needed by Firefox is certainly not part of AIX 5.3. You need to source and install that first.

You can run "lslpp -l xlC.aix50.rte" to see what version you have installed at the moment. (I think AIX 5.3 came with 9.0)
 
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Oh this is super helpful, thank you @Timo W.! I'll see if I can move that file over to the RS/6000 by FTP (or just burn another CD) - fingers crossed!

I'll post again to share how it all goes...

Huxley
 
Okay, got an update: I used FTP to transfer the file over, and unpacked it on the IBM box. However, when I try to actually install it using SMIT, it get a new batch of prerequisites errors 🙄

Here’s a screenshot:

View attachment IMG_3091.jpeg

I’m not ready to give up yet but this whole experience is pretty frustrating - it’s just an endless chicken and egg puzzle that I just can’t seem to solve. As before, any tips or suggestions are welcome.
 
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Old tech requires the patience mostly found in old Tech's who have "been there and done that" already :biggrin:

I do recall spending many hours doing exactly this on AIX and Solaris in the past. Definitely a character building exercise.

The only useful tip I have is document the exact details including commands used, ready for when you need to do it again.
 
Solaris is way more user-friendly. I have two SPARCs (SS5 and Blade 100) running Solaris and they have stuff like Doom, DOSBox, StarOffice, Acrobat Reader etc. running. Installing any of that was a piece of cake.
 
Timo W. said:
Solaris is way more user-friendly. I have two SPARCs (SS5 and Blade 100) running Solaris and they have stuff like Doom, DOSBox, StarOffice, Acrobat Reader etc. running. Installing any of that was a piece of cake.
Click to expand...

Partly because Sun had a rather loyal following of sys admins and programmers who did a lot of design and programming for SPARC and SunOS and which was shared with others.

IBM was never really interested in building a community like that.
 
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