RE: PTF's

John,

If you have a decent speed Internet connection use Fix Central at
http://www-912.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/.  It works back to V5R1.
Basically, go in and select the groups that interest you.  Use the
option to download immediately.  The Java applet will compare what's
available to what's on the iSeries and only pull the difference.  Once
all of the groups are pulled, use GO PTF option 8 with a PTF source of
*SERVICE to install them.  If you're really far behind, you may want to
download them group by group in order to stay under IBM's threshold that
triggers physical media vs. immediate download.

For the CUME, I also use Fix Central.  However, for CUMEs it doesn't
support downloading PTFs individually; just CD-ROM images.  So pull the
images down and use virtual optical to load & install.  InfoCenter (
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/iseries/ ) has good instructions; go there
and search for "PTF virtual optical" or something similar and you should
be able to find it easily enough.

I believe that the CUME CD images it builds are also tailored to only
pull the net-new PTFs.  Options exist for both CUMEs and groups to pull
complete CD images but there's no need to do that unless you're loading
the PTFs to multiple systems.

Some may argue that the CUME should be loaded before the groups.  I've
never found it to make a difference which comes first.  However, if you
are pretty far behind you probably want to do groups (or CUME) first,
IPL to apply, then load the CUME (or group).  Some people have reported
IPL issues if too many PTFs were set to load at once.

Here, due to a quirk in our process controls I don't need to go through
our change management process to load group PTFs but I do for CUMEs.  So
I leave the CUME level alone for the most part (update it annually) and
simply load up on groups.  There's significant overlap between the two
so I don't think I'm missing anything important by ignoring the CUMEs.
As we IPL once a month, the week before the IPL I use Fix Central to
pull updates to all of the groups that matter to us.  Once you're caught
up, it's quick to stay up to date as the net-new downloads are typically
not that large and not all groups are updated each month.

Also, I leave all PTFs as *TEMP unless they are defined as having to be
*PERM: APYPTF LICPGM(*ALL) APY(*TEMP) DELAYED(*YES) IPLAPY(*YES
*APYPERM).  It's especially handy for when I do have to go through
change management as I can easily say that the fixes are applied
temporarily and can be removed if a problem crops up.

With this process I don't worry about pulling HIPERS as they're
released; they're caught in the next month's groups.

John A. Jones, CISSP
Americas Information Security Officer
Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
V: +1-630-455-2787 F: +1-312-601-1782
john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Candidi
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 7:08 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: PTF's

I want to order all the latest PTF's for my V2.5.0 machine. We don't
update them regularly so there may be quite a few. Do I need to know
what I have and what I don't have already? What is the difference
between the group and Cumes? And how are the groups and cume's
identified so that I know what I'm ordering. Excuse me if  this question
has been asked before but we're a one man shop and this is one of my
part-time jobs here (-:

 

John A Candidi

Rutgers Insurance Companies

IT Director - Iseries Manager

856-779-2274

 

 

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