V5R1 InfoCenter

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Okay, I'm confused.

I've been reviewing the InfoCenter CDs sent with V5R1.  And from what I can
tell, the second disk (supplemental manuals) is basically exactly the same
as the first disk, only with a date of 2001.  That is, the files on the
second disk are exactly the same, but with an earlier timestamp.

There are a couple of manuals missing, and that's about it.

Am I just losing my mind (what little is left these days)?

Nevermind.  I figured it out.

Many of the manuals on the first CD are "placeholder" documents.  That is,
they are 13KB documents with nothing in them except some text that says
they're on the second CD.  So evidently, you're supposed to copy them from
the second CD.  However, you can't just do a mass copy from the second CD.
The second CD doesn't have JUST the supplemental files, it's got all of
them, and will copy over the files from the first CD.

So if the data on the second CD is out of date, and you do a mass copy from
CD2 to the folder where the first CD was installed, you'll wipe it out.  Is
it out of date?  I don't know, except that the dates on those manuals are
2001, and the dates on the ones from the first CD are 2003.

Who thought this was a good idea?  There are days when I'm just thrilled by
what IBM does, and there are days when I swear the lunatics are running the
asylum.  "Placeholder" documents?  What the heck was that all about?  So
that you didn't get 404 errors on your wonderful HTML-based Infocenter?
Okay fine, if you're going to do that and have a second CD, don't duplicate
all the files from the first CD!

Anywho, I'm gonna try to make sense of this.  I'm going to delete all the
13KB files on CD1.  I'm going to copy all the files in from CD2.  I'm then
going to copy files from CD1 over CD2.  Then I'll move the whole thing back
to the original folder.

Somebody deserves to be beaten with a wet manual.

Joe