Image Catalogs for Upgrades

Since this topic is being discussed today:

Back in February we upgraded our test box (V5R2 - V5R3) from an Image
catalog.  The system was at
C4244520 with all of the required Image Catalog and upgrade PTF's.

It appeared that having multiple image catalogs on the system caused the
LIC install to hang.  I had the LIC and O/S in image catalog UPGRADE05.
I also had image catalogs CUMULATIVE and GROUPS.  The command entered
was: PWRDWNSYS OPTION(*IMMED) RESTART(*YES) IPLSRC(*IMGCLG)
IMGCLG(UPGRADE05)

After the LIC installs hung at srcC6004001 (three times) I would IPL and
find image catalog UPGRADE05 unloaded from OPTVRT01 and either
CUMULATIVE or GROUPS loaded.  After deleting image catalogs CUMULATIVE
and GROUPS the LIC install completed successfully and I was able to
continue with the O/S install.

Supportline opened a discussion group and their conclusion was that they
had never seen this before and that it might have something to do with
the system being an older 170.  

Two weeks ago I upgraded our prod system, an 810 and ran into the same
issue again.  I IPLed, deleted the PTF image catalogs with DLTIMGCLG
IMGCLG(xxxx) KEEP(*YES) and then completed the upgrade successfully.
After the upgrade I recreated the image catalogs using CRTIMGCLG
IMGCLG(CUMULATIVE) DIR('/imgclg/cumulative') CRTDIR(*NO) and ADDIMGCLGE
IMGCLG(CUMULATIVE) FROMFILE('/imgclg/cumulative/C5207530_01')
TOFILE(*fromfile)  Since the images were already loaded the add
completed in about a second.


SupportLine STILL says that they have never heard of this problem from
anyone other than me.  One recommendation was to load all of the PTFs in
one image catalog rather than two, but they still can't go in the same
one as the upgrade images so I'm not sure what difference that would
make.

The upgrade completed very quickly using the image catalog, about two
hours not counting IPLs.  I like the image catalogs for upgrades; it
sure beats standing there swapping CD's all night, but I would like to
be able to preload the CUME and groups also.  As far as normal PTF
operations go there doesn't seem to be much advantage to image catalogs
unless you are downloading the ePTF .bin files.  If you use CD's the
effort is the same.

My biggest concern here is that the whole idea is to automate the
process.  If I have to stand there and watch it then the image catalogs
are useless to me.  I need to have a reasonable expectation that an
image catalog upgrade will complete succesfully.

Has anyone had similar experiences or is this just an id10t error?  I
have not seen this behavior documented and SL seems to think that it
should not work this way.

Regards,

Scott Ingvaldson
iSeries System Administrator
GuideOne Insurance Group