Hi Everyone
I'm preparing for upgrading an application. The application upgrade documents say the following. its AIX 5.3 Server.
How do I find if my AIX supports the X11 windowing environment?
Thanks.
I am not quite sure what you mean by that: X-Windows is a client-server system with a server-part, a client part and some network-protocols between these.
Lets try some clarification first:
An "X-client" is an application which uses the X-Windows facilities to work. Your program is an X-client, other examples would be Firefox, "xterm", etc..
"X-Server" is something which can display X-clients: this needs a (several) graphic card(s), some monitor with graphical abilities and a driver for the graphics card. Usually this driver software is called "X-server" in the narrower sense.
X-clients will start on any system, because the whole thing is networked: an application (the X-client) will use either a local server or some system with a running X-server somewhere on the network. It will use a special protocol (X-protocol) to do so.
It is a little confusing, because the X-server runs on the system usually called "client" and the X-client will run on a system usually called "server", but when you follow my explanations above it perfectly makes sense (i hope ;-)) ).
So, to answer your question: AIX systems are usually servers, which don't even have graphics equipment (what for - they are in a data center), but that doesn't mean they can't run X-clients. It just means that you have to have a running X-server to display these clients once they run. You might need some shared libraries for the application to run (have a look in "/usr/lib/X11" for the X11-related libs). You might also have to set the DISPLAY variable, which tells the X-clients where on the network the X-server is located. (A DISPLAY-variable is a hostname/IP-address followed by ":n.m", where n and m are integers, telling the display- and screen-number of the server. X-servers can have several displays and each display can have several screens. Usually, though, it is ":0.0".).
If you need to have a local X-server on the system it will have to be equipped with a graphics card and a monitor and a mouse.
I hope this helps.
bakunin