Month: October 2022

Recently one of the issues we supported for a customer was their inability to reset a sequence number or change a journal during business hours. It was a requirement that they had not automated yet. The administrator would manually go in every couple of months, during off hours, and manually make the change.

To make this change, the admin would hold the thousands of QSQSRVR and QZDASOINIT jobs running on their system, issue their CHGJRN command, and then release the jobs when complete.

The reason they called us was that they had forgotten to run their process and their applications came to a halt and their users were no longer able to work.

Although they successfully held most of the jobs, they continued to receive CPF7018 messages whenever trying the CHGJRN command.

The customer was very frustrated with all the time lost. Although the help text shows the issue the WRKRNA command, it does not cover the next steps of F19 – Display Journal Objects and then option 6 for Commitment Definitions. Fortunately, we suggested the Work with Commitment Definitions command (WRKCMTDFN). Using the command and its defaults, we were able to narrow the scope of the thousands of jobs the customer held to the one they needed to process, and then their CHGJRN command worked, and processing went back to normal.

Many of us know about commitment control, but rarely have to troubleshoot. WRKCMTDFN command is one of those commands you should add to your notes for when that unusual error interrupts your day.

More From This Month:

Function Junction – Securing Applications
The Grass is Always Greener Over The Septic Field – An Argument for Modernization Over Replacement
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iTech iTip Videos
Sips & Tricks: Coffee with iTech
iBasics: IBM i Education for the Beginner System Administrator
Watch Replay: Tactical Security Day
iPOWER Hour Episode 40: Security Vulnerabilities on Your IBM i
Upcoming Events
IBM i, FSP, and HMC release levels and PTFs (October 2022)

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The post CHGJRN, CPF7018, and WRKCMTDFN first appeared on iTech Solutions Group.

The ability to lock down access to applications integrated into IBM i has been a long-time feature. This feature has been best known in the past as Application Administration and was often accessed either through IBM i Access for Windows using System i Navigator or by the Navigator for i web interface. With the introduction of New Navigator (the new Navigator for i web interface), the name of Application Administration has changed – sort of.

The feature as it’s accessed through the IBM i command line is called Function Usage. It can be accessed using the WRKFCNUSG command. New Navigator is now adopting this same name so that there is no confusion going forward as to what you’re working with. To access Function Usage in New Navigator, connect to the server you want to manage, hover over the padlock icon on the left, and then click Function Usage.

 

What comes on the screen next is a list of all the Function IDs that you can control access to on the system. The list is a bit overwhelming, as there are over 200 different Function IDs listed. Fortunately, each column has a built-in filter for quick searching. Today, for example, we’re going to look at locking down access to your FTP server. Type ‘logon’ in the Function Name column. Right-click on Logon Server and click Change.

 

There are two Default Authorities:  Allowed and Denied. Both carry two different philosophies. Allowed is for those who want to allow access to everyone but deny a few users from accessing. Denied is for those who want to deny access to everyone but allow a few users to access. Most often you will choose the latter when locking down applications. For this example, we are denying all users but we are explicitly allowing user profile ITECHSOL to be able to access this function.

 

An excellent option on each of these Function IDs is *ALLOBJ special authority. Having it set to a value of Used means that if you are a profile with *ALLOBJ special authority, you are allowed to use it. If it’s set to Not used, then you cannot access it if you’ve been denied access. This allows you to easily give access to system administrators for functions like FTP or looking at job logs.

Using the example above, if I try to access the FTP server using my …

The post Function Junction – Securing Applications first appeared on iTech Solutions Group.

Let’s talk a little bit about migrating off the platform. Hang on a second. What?

That’s right. Let’s talk about moving away from IBM i.

It’s been often said that the grass is always greener on the other side. I would argue that in the case of moving away from IBM i, the grass is most certainly greener over a leaking septic tank. Since the septic tank is buried below ground far from view, the lush green grass is indicative of hidden problems that will unfortunately make your new property acquisition cost far more than you thought.

What do I mean by that? I’ve made a pretty unsavory comparison.

I need to, yes pun intended, ensure my claims are backed up.

A big part of this is technical debt and how it may pertain to a traditional IBM i shop. Let’s say, for example, a customer bought a turnkey AS/400 software package to run their business back in 1988. For the last 34 years, they may have recouped their original investment many times over. Now, the business has changed. They haven’t maintained and grown their applications to keep up with said change. The company wants graphical screens, drop-down boxes, vendor support to make customizations, and an overall lower cost. So they view 34 years of change as something they can forego by simply purchasing a new application system to run their business. The “set it and forget it” mentality may have run up what appears to be an enormous amount of technical debt. This is usually where the perceived need to move to a new platform altogether comes into play.

Considering they’ve gotten their money’s worth out of a solution for the last 34 years many times over, I would argue that a business can afford to reinvest in IBM i and their traditional applications. How hard would it be to implement changes to bring application logic in line with business changes? Well, 34 years’ worth of change is darn near impossible to achieve if you build or buy. The old triangle of “you can have a solution for cheap, fast, and well-done so pick two” certainly works for any professional industry. So to purchase a solution and implement it quickly and well done, well that’s going to cost you financially. That’s the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) type of solution. It will have to be customized heavily for your business in …

The post The Grass is Always Greener Over The Septic Field – An Argument for Modernization Over Replacement first appeared on iTech Solutions Group.

Below is a table of the major group PTFs for the last few releases. This is what we are installing for our customers on iTech Solutions Quarterly Maintenance program.

7.5
7.4
7.3
7.2
7.1
6.1
V5R4

Cumul Pack
22104
22125
22132
21084
17192
15063
12094

Tech. Refresh
–
6
12
9
11
–
–

Grp Hipers
14
90
168
221
284
210
204

DB Group
2
22
30
27
43
33
33

DB2 Mirror
2
20
–
–
–
–
–

Java Group
3
16
27
37
48
41
34

Print Group
–
–
–
3
13
31
49

Backup/Recov.
4
34
59
78
75
61
57

Blade/IXA/IXS
–
–
–
1
16
30
15

HTTP
4
228

1
7
12
13
11
17
22

Security
8
39
79
112
110
60
 33

High Availability
1
10
18
21
18
 5

Hardware
–
2
18
35
44
 17

Open Source
–
–
6
6
6
–

The easiest way to check your levels is to issue the command WRKPTFGRP. They should all have a status of installed, and you should be up to the latest for all the above, based upon your release. Now there are more groups than the ones listed above, but these are the general ones that most people require. We can help you know which group PTFs you should be installing on your machine based upon your licensed programs. Here is a nice tidbit. The Cumulative PTF package number is broken down as YDDD, where Y is the year and DDD is the day it was released. Therefore, if we look at the cumulative package for 7.3, the ID is 21245. We can determine that it was created on the 245th day of 2021, which is September 2, 2021. Look at your machine and this will give you a quick indication of just how far out of date in PTFs you may be.

HMCs

Fixes are listed below in the order in which they should be installed for each software version. If you are upgrading to a new release, install the base version from recovery media or network image and then apply updates in the order listed. If you already have fixes applied and your current fix level is not in this list, just start with the next higher-numbered fix pack in the list. Be sure to read the release notes for each HMC version, service …

The post IBM i, FSP, and HMC release levels and PTFs (October 2022) first appeared on iTech Solutions Group.

When I ask people about their use of recent additions to the IBM i operating system my question about Temporal Tables are generally met by question “What are those?”

I am not going to explain what they are and how to use them in this post, as I wrote about them when they were introduced as part of IBM i 7.3 . You learn about them in the post I wrote when they introduced as part of 7.3, you can read about them here.

What I am going to explain in this post are two SQL Views that show you information about Temporal Tables:

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