Re: Fix Central Again

It worked for me again. That's two dys in a row...

For one thing, make it easy on yourself and look into downloading the CD images 
and then installing from an image catalog rather than burning your own CD. IBM 
wasn't trying to screw us by not giving us CDs anymore - rather, they gave us a 
truly great thing with the image catalog. Check it out.

As for the deal with the CD labels, yeah, I hated it when they took away the 
meaningful label, but since I started with the image catalogs I RARELY deal 
with a physical CD anyway. This takes my PTF ordering time from two days (best 
case w/ physical media) down to like half a day (FTP download of CD images). 
That's assuming the iPTF system isn't hosed up for a day or two... ;-)

Now that I'm used to it, I like the fact that the hipers and database groups 
are automatically included with the cume. That's all there is to it. I take a 
printscreen of the WRKPTFGRP screen before & after I install a cume, then I 
know what levels I had before and after.

I still find the PTF process very solid, but the ordering process is less solid 
now that it is a cutesy web-based thing. For individual PTFs, SNDPTFORD over 
the Internet works well and is solid like the old days.

One caveat <soapbox>: On V5R3, V5R4, watch out for Electronic Service Agent 
automatically downloading PTFs for you into *SERVICE without being asked. Then 
when you go to apply a PTF that you need, you get more than you bargained for. 
I about had a kitten when I discovered this "feature".</soapbox>

-Marty

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date: Tue, 09 May 2006 12:26:14 -0400
from: DAVIDSON_L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
subject: Re: Fix Central Again

I'm in to my third week now of this struggle...