Excuse Me…Can You Hold this Secondary Partition While I Upgrade the Primary?
September 11, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Hey, Joe:
I have an iSeries box with two logical partitions (LPARs) running OS/400 V4R5. Our shop needs to upgrade the primary partition to OS/400 V5R1, and we want to put the secondary partition on hold while the upgrade is occurring (we don’t want the secondary to IPL every time we have to IPL the primary). How do I shut down the secondary partition and keep it down while I’m doing the upgrade?
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— Ralph
This is a common situation with OS/400 partitions, and many people have configured OS/400 partitions exactly the way you describe in your setup. When you have production work running in multiple partitions, it’s difficult to IPL the primary partition because it is the controlling partition for the box. Since the other partitions are dependent on the primary remaining active, IPLing the primary partition results in an automatic IPL for all secondary partitions on your box; it’s the equivalent of performing a system IPL for your entire box.
And, as you point out, this is not the optimal upgrade situation.
Fortunately, there is a way to put the secondary partition on hold when you’re dealing with restricted work on the primary. Here’s how to shut down a secondary partition when you need to perform system or hardware upgrades that require one or more IPLs to your controlling partition.
- On your primary partition, execute the Start System Service Tools (STRSST) command to bring up the Service Tools menu. If you’re running OS/400 V5R1 or above, you’ll need to enter a Dedicated Service Tools (DST) user profile and password but, since you’re running V4R5, this will take you directly to the System Service Tools (SST) menu.
- On the STRSST menu, select option 5, Work with System Partitions, and press ENTER.
- From the Work with System Partitions menu, select option 2, Work with Partition Status.
- On the Work with Partition Status screen, you’ll see a number of options from which you can choose to change each partition’s current state (i.e., On, Off) or the IPL and power on attributes of your partitions. This screen also shows you the current status of each partition, including the Sys IPL Action value, which OS/400 uses to determine what to do when the a request is made to perform a system IPL. Chances are good that IPL is the current value under Sys IPL Action for both your primary and secondary partitions.
- Press the F23 key to display more options, and, for your secondary partition, select option 14=Hold Partition on System IPL and press ENTER. When the screen redisplays, the new secondary partition value under the Sys IPL Action column will now be changed to Hold, which means that this partition will no longer automatically re-IPL when the primary partition is IPLed (a system IPL). You can then power down this partition by selecting 7=Delayed Power Off, which is equivalent to pressing the power off button on a stand-alone system; alternatively you can also go to your secondary partition and run your usual power-off routine or the Power Down System (PWRDWNSYS) command to shut down that partition.
- After making this adjustment, the secondary partition will no longer restart whenever you IPL the primary. Perform your upgrade and, when you’re ready to bring the secondary partition back on line, go back into the Work with Partition Status screen in the System Service Tools menu. This time, select option 13= IPL Partition on System IPL for the secondary partition, press ENTER, and then select option 1=Power on to restart that partition.
This is an easy way to control secondary partition behavior when the first partition needs extended maintenance. I hope it works in your situation.
— Joe
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