Admin Alert: A Virtual Optical Device PTF Install

by Joe Hertvik

The thing about OS/400, or any operating system, for that matter, is that one topic frequently leads to another. Last week, reader Jeff Brown wrote in to discuss IBM's new virtual optical device (VOD) technique for installing PTFs. With the help of another reader and IBM documentation, I can shed more light on this technique and explain how you can use it for installing Licensed Program Products and even OS/400 upgrades.

Reader Ted Slezak provided additional help in getting started with virtual optical devices. Here's what he had to say about the technique, based on his practical experience.

IBM makes a limited version of virtual optical support available in V5R1, via PTF SI03120. The catch is that the V5R1 version only supports upgrading to V5R2. Being fortunate enough to have sufficient free disk space, I used this approach when I recently upgraded to V5R2. The upgrade went smoothly, and using a VOD certainly saves a lot of the busy work involved with an upgrade. I still did the cumulative and group PTF apply directly from CD-ROM.

Now that I'm on V5R2, I've been using the virtual optical support regularly. I use the Internet PTF Downloads Web site to download group and individual PTFs via FTP, and copy the images directly into the IFS [Integrated File System] directory I have set up for my virtual optical devices. Once you understand the process, it is quite easy and you can still burn a PTF CD image if you want a permanent copy.

As you pointed out, keeping things cleaned up and tidy is important. It is also very important to unload a catalog from the virtual optical drive once you're finished. Otherwise, the system will automatically scan both the physical optical drive and the virtual drive when it is looking for something, which may not be desirable.

According to IBM documentation, virtual optical devices (also called "virtual media installs" in some literature) can be used for several different types of OS/400 media installations, not just PTFs. As Ted pointed out, you also can use VODs for upgrades from OS/400 V5R1 to V5R2, as well as for installing single Licensed Program Products on your machine and for distributing software to clients in your network.

A VOD uses an image media catalog for installations. An image media catalog is an iSeries object (with an object type of *IMGCLG) that can contain up to 64 optical images, with each image associated with a single user-specified OS/400 Integrated File System file. When using an image catalog, you preload (copy) all your physical media to an IFS location, then use the preloaded images to perform the install.

Image catalogs basically act like physical media that's stored inside your iSeries box. Because they are preloaded, catalogs provide a few advantages over performing an install from optical media:

• Media verification. By loading optical media to the IFS, you can verify that the media isn't defective before you use it. This alone might save you from an ugly upgrade when your install goes belly up because it hit a scratched CD.
• Unattended installations. As Ted pointed out, you can avoid a lot of the busy work involved with changing CDs in an upgrade or install because you can load a number of optical images to disk.

There are some technical details to attend to when you want to use VODs in OS/400 V5R1 or V5R2. In particular, you'll want to pay attention to the following:

• For both V5R1 and V5R2, your load-source disk unit (unit 1) must have at least 1 Gigabyte of free space to run. IBM states that the load-source disk unit must be at least 4 gigabytes. Image files cannot reside in an independent auxiliary storage pool.
• For OS/400 V5R1, PTF and Licensed Program Product installations are not supported, and these implementations are different for V5R2. A VOD is provided through the SI03210 PTF, and it's only used for upgrading your system to OS/400 V5R2. The V5R1 catalogs are restricted to upgrade file names. IBM provides special instructions for creating V5R1 VODs, and the V5R1 image catalog object type is *USRSPC.
• When performing an image catalog upgrade to V5R2, the upgrade works like a D-mode IPL during Licensed Internal Code installations.
• V5R2 VODs do not support the Load and Run (LODRUN) command.
• New commands were added to OS/400 V5R2 to support creating a virtual optical device (CRTDEVOPT), creating an image catalog (CRTIMGCLG), adding an image catalog entry (ADDIGMCLGE), loading an image catalog (LODIMGCLG), working with image catalog entries (WRKIMGCLGE), and verifying an image catalog (VFYIMGCLG). New parameters have also been added to the Power Down System (PWRDWNSYS) command to specify what image catalog to use on a software upgrade IPL. The interesting thing is that, in this age of OS/400 graphic enablement, most of the functions I have found for VODs were controlled from OS/400 green-screen commands.

While it may seem like you're adding extra steps to your installs, I have a feeling that VODs will grow on OS/400 professionals once they start using them. VODs hold some promise for making your OS/400 V5R2 administrative functions run easier, and you should investigate them when you upgrade to V5R2.

To find out more about virtual optical devices, see the following references from IBM:

• "Enterprise IT Management Made Simple: IBM eServer iSeries i890 and OS/400 V5R2 Announcements" (in PDF format)
• "Install fixes from an image catalog" (iSeries Information Center, V5R2)
• "V5R2 OS/400 and other enhancements" (in PDF format)

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