RE: Perm. apply PTF's thoughts

My 2¢:

Back in the days of V3R1 to V3R2 upgrades many people had issues with not
having enough temporary storage to complete their upgrades and you
absolutely could not upgrade without perm applying all PTF's.  I have not
seen this occur since.

The thought of having to slip the LIC or O/S to remove a PTF that has been
perm applied and needs to be removed keeps me from perm applying anything
that does not require it.  A former employer's policy was to perm apply all
PTF's at every IPL and I argued (futilely) against that until it finally bit
us.  If you keep fairly current on cume packages you should not need to get
current before upgrading.  I usually apply new cumes to my test system
within 30 days of release(just long enough to verify defectives) and then to
my prod systems a month or two later.

I do keep the PTF save files cleaned up, though that is more of a
housekeeping issue than a space issue.  I also will not consider doing an
upgrade without a RCLSTG first, this can take a while but unless you don't
mind doing your upgrade twice I highly recommend this step.

Scott Ingvaldson
AS/400 System Administrator
GuideOne Insurance Group 

-----Original Message-----
date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 08:33:39 -0500
from: Mike.Crump@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
subject: Perm. apply PTF's thoughts

Folks,

Historically, I've been remiss about permanently applying PTF's.
Originally, my thought process was that normally you see it as an item on
new releases with corresponding instructions to clean up disk space.  I've
never had storage problems around new release installs so I have forsaken
that process in the name of time.

I'm beginning to wonder how wise that is.  Doesn't that leave some
potential for PTF *SAVF's and other objects (potentially IFS) out there for
cleanup?  And couldn't those objects be in many different places on the
system (QSYSDIR, QIWS, QDNS, stream files in IFS directories, etc)?  What
do other people do with regards to perm apply of PTF's?  Do you think it is
easier to perm apply PTF's prior to a new release as opposed to cleaning
their tracks later or never?


Michael Crump