Re: Upgrading from 5.3 to 5.4 this weekend

[Jerry Adams <jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ron,

Glad to hear that everything worked out in the end.  I made a note here 
about perm applying the MF PTF's, but I was going to perm apply all of 
them, anyway, as per the recommendations.


I, also, made a note based upon your experience to copy the CD's to my 
PC first.  Can always re-create later if needed and even use that to 
populate the image catalogue.


I didn't gather from your early posts that a mfg plant was involved or 
it had to schedule downtime.  Been there, done that; it can get really 
nasty sometimes.  I'm lucky that here everyone has scurried out by 1600 
every Friday (if not earlier!) so I've got any weekend to do "stuff". 


It sounds like you prevailed under the gun.  Congrats!  (Hope mine goes 
as well.)


        * Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i5/iSeries Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
voice
        615.995.7024
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        615.995.1201
email
        jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>



Ron Adams wrote:
> UPDATE -
>
> After my last posting on Friday, indicating that we would postpone, I
> received word from the main plant that they had already scheduled downtime
> or reduced staff for Saturday, and that it might be several more months
> until there was an opportunity to do it again came up. I tried to argue that
> it was not a good weekend to do it, and that we weren't completely ready,
> only to be told that if possible, it needed to happen now. So, I reluctantly
> agreed, and spent the rest of the day feverishly reading everything I could
> find, loading PTFs and doing cleanup.
>
> Here's what happened:
>
> Friday afternoon I loaded all the CDs into an Image Catalog
>
> Friday night I shutdown the system and did a full system backup.
>
> Saturday morning 8am, I did some additional backups and cleanup, then
> (nervously) started the install (first time) around 11am. System hung with
> C6004001. Called IBM, found out we were missing two TPFs MF40281 & MF40278
> which are required for the Image Catalog load. Actually, I had both of
> these, but they werent permanently applied.
>
> Saturday afternoon 2pm - restarted the Install. Everything went fine until
> it got to installing the Licensed Programs. It failed loading QUSRSYS, error
> messages CPF3C83 and CPF3D95 in joblog. 4pm, second call to IBM. Worked thru
> the issue which involved deleting an Exit Point from QIBM_QSY_CERT_APPS and
> restarting the Licensed program install.
>
> Saturday afternoon 5pm - another issue with Licensed program install. This
> time it was with Extended Base Support and numerous errors to go along with
> it. To make matters worse, apparrently I scratched CD B29MM_03 when
> inserting it into the CD drive and made portions of it unreadable. So, I ran
> to Best Buy and bought a SkipDr disc repair kit. Remarkably/luckily it
> worked! However, I still couldn't get Extended Base Support to load. Third
> call to IBM. It would appear that during the initial attempt to load this
> LICPGM, it left some files in an opne/corrupted state. We IPLed the system
> and tried to load again, this time successful!
>
> Saturday evening 7pm - system appears to be stable, start downloading V5R4
> ptfs, run some necesarry jobs and go home.
>
> Sunday afternoon 1pm - apply PTFs, time changed successfully after PTF
> install and IPL.
>
> The rest of the Sunday was spent testing and verifying that everything
> worked.
>
> The only other major issue I had was with Robot/Autotune, which had to be
> completely reinstalled.
>
> All things considered, it wasn't too bad. I lost about 4-5 hours due to the
> 3 issues. Of those, two were my fault (if you count the CD scratch), and one
> was an IBM problem. All total, I spent 3-5 hours Friday preparing, 10 hours
> Saturday installing, 5 hours Sunday installing PTFs and testing. Total 18-20
> hours give or take an hour or 2.
>
> As of this writing (9:40am) Monday, I've only had one issue. It was due to a
> Logical file that was corrupt and needed to be re-built/compiled.
>