I’m pretty new to AIX, and I’m learning all about its idiosyncrasies. One thing I still don’t understang is why SSH isn’t installed by default. The packages are located on the AIX 7 Volume 1 of 2 DVD, but for some reason the installer doesn’t feel the need to make sshd available to the system at install time. For those who care about security, the following steps will get SSH installed and operational on your AIX 7.1 server:
First, mount the “AIX 7 Volume 1 of 2” DVD in your drive (NIM installs aren’t covered here) and mount it up:
$ mount -V cdrfs -o ro /dev/cd0 /mnt
Once you mount the DVD you will need to change to the package directory:
$ cd /mnt/usr/sys/inst.images/
From there you can install the openssh and openssl packages:
$ installp -ac -Y -d . openssh.base openssl.base openssl.man.en_US openssh.man.en_US
This will install the packages and enable the SSH service. You can verify that the daemon started with the lssrc command:
$ lssrc -s sshd
Subsystem Group PID Status
sshd ssh 7340084 active
This is crazy simple and a great way to improve security on your AIX system.