'/usr/linux/bin/ls --color' on AIX

I have a habit of using GNU coreutils on non-GNU systems (e.g. AIX) for my shell environment, so I install the coreutils package from the AIX Toolbox for Linux on all my machines. My 'ls' is aliased to '/usr/linux/bin/ls --color' to have ANSI colored output. Unfortunately, this has unwanted side effects when piping 'ls' output to other commands, apparently because of some color-related control characters. Consider:

# alias ls
alias ls='/usr/linux/bin/ls --color'

# ls ./foobar
./foobar

# ls ./foobar | xargs /usr/bin/rm -e
rm: ./foobar: A file or directory in the path name does not exist.

However, using the standard AIX 'ls' works:

# /usr/bin/ls ./foobar | xargs /usr/bin/rm -e
rm: Removing ./foobar

Had to break my head a little before guessing this one.

NIM subnet mismatch and LED 613

Here's something that can occur fairly easily: we changed the IP address of a NIM client to another subnet, but forgot to update the client's subnet on the NIM server, i.e. 'lsnim -l <client>' still showed the old subnet. Then we did a BOS install on the client, and right after loading the kernel the client got stuck in LED 613 ('8 mm 80 GB VXA-2 tape device'). Of course, the LED's meaning has nothing to do with the original problem, so this is one of those "better-write-that-down" things.