RE: New version of HMC.

If you have an HMC you might as well use it to check these levels out.
Hey, if you do it might help to make sense out of what you are seeing in
STRSST.
Log on to your HMC and tell it you want to update your firmware. When you
get into it, tell it you just want to check the current levels. (Yeah,
it's a little scary that you have to start the update to see your current
values but you'll quickly get over that fear after you do it once.) Then
maybe the GUI will explain it better.

Once you get your firmware and HMC code up to speed, V7 of HMC's interface
is generally much better.

It's just to get there you have to update firmware, update HMC, update
firmware, update HMC, repeat - depending on how far you are behind.

Much of this should be familiar to those who came from AS/400s and
remember having to IPL to A side then B side (I forget which first) to
apply cumes and what not. iSeries people may not be quite so familiar.

Firmware can be loaded to be applied later. Then it can be applied. Then
it can be "approved" (much like being applied permanently). Most of this
can be done with 1 IPL of the firmware (which, unfortunately, is quite
disruptive to the lpars on that rack).

Did drive up to Rochester and asked why the hell I had to IPL the whole
rack, even when I had redundant FSP's. Why couldn't they upgrade one,
then upgrade the other later? Answer was something about the IPL applying
CEC (pronounced "keck") updates. Which is a nice explanation, but I'd
still like my resolution.

Rob Berendt