The Four Hundred

Little things make--or break--iSeries ease of use. Take PTFs, for example. Last June, IBM made a minor change to its group PTF distribution scheme that makes applying PTFs more difficult to organize and administer. I am, of course, referring to the way IBM changed its PTF CD labeling and the extra hassle it causes iSeries administrators. While it's a simple change, the new labeling can confuse administrators and create more work in keeping PTFs straight.

Here's what happened. The group PTF CDs that IBM sent before the June change were clearly marked with the name of the group PTF on at least the first CD in the package. So if I ordered the Java group PTF SF99069 for OS/400 V5R1, the first CD would be custom labeled Group PTF # SF99069, with the group PTF build date and the OS/400 version number the group was created for. The number of CD volumes in the group PTF and the installation order of each volume were also printed on the CD (Vol 001 of 001, for example). This labeling made it easy to locate a specific group PTF CD set and arrange the CDs in the proper installation order.

For some reason, IBM changed this logical setup last June. So if you received another SF99069 group PTF today, you'd find that most of the markings I just described have either disappeared from the CD or become more cryptic. The printed group PTF number on the CD is now gone, as are the build date and the OS/400 version number. In their place the CD will contain your company name, customer number, PMR number, and order number, which tell you nothing about the contents of the CD. So if you ordered the SF99501 database group PTF along with the SF99069 Java group PTF, there isn't an easy way to tell which CDs belong to which group, and that can easily lead to errors in applying PTFs. The CD volume sequencing information is also changed, making it harder--but not impossible--to determine how many CDs are in a particular group and how to arrange your group CDs for PTF installation.

With this simple change, IBM has made it more difficult for administrators to organize and manage group PTF CDs. And if you're dealing with more than one iSeries or AS/400 that may be at different OS/400 releases, this becomes a pain because you--not IBM, who created and shipped the CD--need to decipher the CD's markings and label it yourself, so you can keep track of which CD contains which PTFs.

The good news is that you can determine which group PTF your CD belongs to, but it involves a little bit more work. If you look at the new CD labels again, you'll see that IBM has printed a sentence on one CD in each group that reads "order documentation can be found in the README directory." Pop this CD into a CD-ROM drive, open the README directory on the CD, and check out which group PTF it contains by opening and reading the ORDLIST file.

But there's a trick, here. The README directory contains both a packing list file (PKGLIST) and an order list file (ORDLIST). Be sure to look at the ORDLIST file for the CD's contents rather than the PKGLIST file, because each file contains different information. The ORDLIST displays the group PTF number and the single PTFs ordered. The PKGLIST file provides the detail of every PTF ordered--including requisites and superseded PTFs--but it doesn't clearly identify the group PTF number. PKGLIST does, however, clearly state which CDs in the set contain the HIPER/database group PTFs that were shipped inside your group PTF order. So if you look at the PKGLIST file, you could mistakenly think that your group PTF set contains HIPER/database group PTFs, when it actually contains a different group PTF set.

If there's more than one CD in the group, the PTF CD installation sequence can be puzzled out by looking at the printing directly above and directly below the "Created:" date on each CD. Above this date, you'll see a single letter, followed by a six-digit number, an underscore (_), and another two-digit number. The two-digit number following the underscore is your group PTF volume number. So if you see C9127533_01 above the created date, that would designate the first CD volume in the group PTF set. C9127533_02 would be the second volume, C9127533_03 would be the third, and so on. So to sequence your CDs, gather up all the CDs with the same six-digit number above the creation date and sequence them according to their appended numbers. To determine the number of CDs in a set, look under the created date on the CD and you'll see two numbers in the format xxx - yyy. The number listed in the yyy position is the number of CDs in your group PTF set.

I've ordered several sets of group PTFs since IBM made this change in June, and they all follow this new labeling schematic. The cumulative PTF CDs are an exception, in that the cumulative CDs are more clearly labeled in a way that resembles the earlier labeling. But be aware that the HIPER and database group PTFs that IBM ships as a separate set, along with the cumulative CDs, follow the new CD labeling format I've detailed above. For a description of how IBM explains the way it's labeling the cumulative PTF CDs, go to Big Blue's Cumulative PTF Packaging Enhancements Web page.

For me, the goofy part of all this is that once I know which group PTF I'm dealing with, how many CDs are in the group, and how to sequence them for installation, I usually write all the old information on a sticky pad note, stick the note to the group PTF set, and rubber-band them together. So, because you have to manually perform what IBM used to do for you automatically, you run the risk of mislabeling the CDs yourself.

While the labeling is not that difficult to understand once you know the tricks, this new labeling scheme is not intuitive, requires extra steps, and can yield wrong information if you don't open the right file on your CD. And those are the good points.

The old labeling system worked fine for stressed-out administrators who didn't want to work at figuring out what their PTF CDs contained. What's more, if IBM made this change to avoid having to print customized group PTF CDs, it failed, because the new CDs also contain a specially printed customer name, customer number, PMR number, and order number, which is (you guessed it) customized information. So IBM hasn't saved anything, as far as I can tell; it only made it more difficult for customers to tell what's on their PTF CDs.

It's unfortunate that this new group PTF CD labeling system is just complicated enough that I have to spend 1,300 words explaining it. I only hope that IBM realizes this small change is really an ease-of-use issue and someday redesigns its PTF CD labels back to something more meaningful. In the meantime, I also hope this Admin Alert will help you understand what you're looking at when you order an OS/400 group PTF.