Re: V7R1 to V7R2 i5/OS upgrade - PTF questions and concerns

1 - How current?
Well, it's been awhile since I've upgraded anything from 7.1 as we're an
all 7.3 shop. That being said I may not remember any pains I had with
that particular upgrade which may have been resolved by applying a PTF on
7.1 first. There's a balance between being at the "bleeding edge" vs
"lagging behind that you can't even see the runners ahead of you".

2 is answered by 3. Providing you know which special ptf's you have, and
that's no small feat.

3. I have used this. And, no, I do not find that either the earlier
release, nor the later release, ptf needs to be on a cume. There have
been some where neither have. I rarely use it for upgrade purposes.
Unless I've recently underwent some trauma which required a PTF and I want
to ensure that is fixed on the newer release. The key word being
"recently".

4. PTF cover letters are only loaded it you tell them to load. I've
found that most of them you load from media (either physical or virtual
optical) do not load the cover letters. But those on individual PTF's
done with SNDPTFORD do. Cover letters are physically stored in members.
See WRKLNK '/QSYS.LIB/QGPL.LIB/QAPZCOVER.FILE/*.MBR'. Permenently
applying a PTF will not remove it's cover letter. Only DLTPTF will. (And
perhaps some other IBM cleanup options.)

5. Are you talking about "Do not permanently apply PTFs for those
licensed programs that you do not plan to upgrade."? So is your question
is: if I am running 7.1 version of 5770-xyz and after the upgrade it still
is 7.1 (which is true for a lot of LPP's) should I not permanently apply
those PTFs? Along with a companion question: If the upgrade
automatically deletes a particular LPP because it is no longer supported
at 7.2 should I still permently apply it's PTFs?
For both of those I would say go ahead and permanently apply those PTF's.
With few exceptions:
a - You've been issued a test ptf. It's time to decide if you want to
a1 - remove it
a2 - permenently apply it,
a3 - remove the test version, order the GA version and permently apply the
GA version.
b - The program is something special like Domino. 5733LD9 may have some
hot fixes which may have to removed before applying the latest fix pack.
So I tend to not permanently apply these hot fixes.

Rob Berendt