RE: Post-mortem on v7r1 to v7r3 upgrade

Thomas:

It's been quite some time since we've seen a series of problems like you
describe, however I'm of the opinion that the upgrade prerequisite PTFs were
missed or incomplete at V7R1, and that most likely was the root cause of the
problem. Since in the end you used a new respin of the I_BASE_01 then the
newest TR would have been on that image and that requires upfront planning
and PTF application.

While I completely and utterly loath download director (IBM, I know you'll
see this: Again can we please have an FTP Option?), I've not had it corrupt
files like you describe. Usually that happens when the file is transferred
from the PC to the system. If you use anything other than binary FTP
(FillZilla has been known to corrupt files, us the command line FTP) Windows
will try and transform the file for you since Windows thinks it's ASCII and
it sees EBCIDIC on the other side.

V7R1 to V7R3 upgrade is usually seamless and very easy. I'm sorry you had
issues.


--
Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Thomas Garvey
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2017 5:25 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Post-mortem on v7r1 to v7r3 upgrade

*I'm curious if our experience in upgrading from v7r1 to v7r3 was unusual,
or more common that expected.*

More than 6 months ago, I downloaded v7r3 to my PC and burned the downloads
to DVD's.
Those DVDs were used to create a NWSD intended for the purpose of creating
a hosted partition.
The plan was to use V7R1 to host a partition which would hold V7R3.
That never happened for unrelated reasons.
The plan changed to just upgrading the v7r1 partition to v7r3, so we used
the files, already in the IFS, to create an image catalog to do the upgrade
from.
After using the API to add all the files to the image catalog, the
LODIMGCLG repeatedly failed.
As each image entry failed, I would download the required file (the
download process was a nightmare in itself) and replace the entry in the
image catalog.  This went file by file (IBASE to BGROUP1) until I gave up on
the previous DVD downloads, and downloaded EVERYTHING again (from the ESS
site).

Lessons learned: do NOT use IBM's Download Director (I NEVER got it to
succeed, at all), use the DownLoadThemAll add-on for FireFox instead

After following all the steps (verifying the image catalog, accepting
license agreements, use the pre-update PC application etc.) I started the
upgrade.
The upgrade from the image catalog ended in about 45 minutes, but I never
got a completion message because a *LNG object for the OAR licensed software
was not found.
We tried again, changing the software to install (skipping OAR) and we got
more errors in the loaded images.
How likely was that? Images that had previously been loaded and verified
and used for an install now failed? More downloading, etc.
Since we don't use/need the OAR feature, we finally proceeded as though the
install was complete.
Next we installed the latest cume we had downloaded (again to an image
catalog) and again never got a completion message.
From that point on, we were never able to IPL the system without a
failure.
For some reason the SCPF subsystem was corrupted and kept using more than
55% of the CPU for DAYS, while doing nothing (no entries in joblog, no open
files, etc.).
When system was restarted, it kept halting with D9002790 SRC code.

Got IBM involved and it appears the cume has a required PTF (from a
technical refresh) that must be applied before the cume can be applied.
Since this was all done from an image catalog, the required IPL would have
been automated, but could never complete, with the same halt.
We were finally able to get the PTF applied and performed several manual
IPLs to get past the halts.

Now, was the problem a flawed CUME download? Should I not have repeated the
LIC/OS install after de-selecting the OAR install?
Was the time between the initial availability of v7r3 and my attempt at
installing it too distant?
(all the v7r1 PTFs were applied, the PC pre-install application confirmed
everything was done and ready).

I was 'this close' to just going back to v7r1. And IBM concurred, if the
last effort they tried didn't work.


*I don't expect that anyone came close to this nightmare, but did
**_anyone_**get through it in a few hours without a hitch?*
I know, much too long a post, and maybe I'm venting, but I am curious.


/Also, BTW, much thanks to all those who helped by responding on this
forum to my earliest requests./

Best Regards,

Thomas Garvey