How Do I Tell These Partitions Apart?

June 16, 2010 Hey, Joe

My organization has five different i/OS partitions. Yesterday, I thought I was working on a test partition green screen and it turned out that I was signed on to a production system. Worse, I deleted a production file and it caused a lot of problems. Can you think of any good way I can stop that from happening in the future?

–Jim

One of the few problems with i/OS is that there isn’t any “are you sure?” button that pops up when you’re going to delete a file. And in one of the few areas that I think Windows has it over i/OS, deleted Windows files go to the Recycle Bin where they can be retrieved again later, if needed (as long as you don’t empty the bin). i/OS doesn’t have an equivalent function. So the only thing you can do when you need to restore a deleted file is to pull out your latest back-up media and restore it.

Not that it helps, but I completely understand getting confused about which system you’re on and doing something nasty on a production partition. I did the same thing about 10 years ago where I totally trashed a Lotus Notes installation, thinking I was on a test machine. It happens.

Since then, I always try to do a few things to make sure my systems are protected and that I’m aware of which partition I’m working on.

1. Don’t use Telnet to start a session on another system–Telnetting between systems is the surest way I know of to get confused as to which session you’re working with. Same thing goes for starting a pass through session using the Start Pass-Through (STRPASTHR) command. Create and use separate workstation session files for each of your partitions, and make sure their session window titles are as distinct as possible. For ideas on how to make your PC5250 windows titles unique, check out this article on Creating More Distinctive PC5250 Window Titles.

2. Color-code your PC5250 workstation sessions–Besides customizing your PC5250 Window titles, you can also change the default colors for the foreground text on your PC5250 screens. PC5250 has a Color Mapping function that allows you to change text and background colors for your green-screen sessions. So instead of using the same standard green for your foreground text, you could change the partition one workstation session to use green for its foreground color, partition two could use red for its text, partition three could use turquoise, etc. With the distinctive Window titles, this may help you keep your bearing as you maneuver between different partitions. To change the foreground colors on your PC5250 session, do the following:

Select Edit, Preferences, Color Mapping from the PC5250 menu bar. This will bring up the following Color Mapping screen.

Click on the Foreground Color dropdown box and choose one of the colors listed there. Upon selecting a new color, the field text will immediately change color so you can see how it looks. Color Mapping offers you several different pre-mixed foreground colors, and there’s also a color palette option that you can click on right next to the Foreground Color dropdown. Some colors look better than others. Some people will use black text on a white background. I’m partial to using orange text on a black background because it’s easy on the eyes and it reminds me of the old amber display stations from the 1980s. Don’t choose black for the foreground text unless you’re also going to change the background color or your foreground text will just blend into the background.
Besides changing the foreground text color, you can also change the color of the PC5250 background. You can also change some other PC5250 text fields, such as status, information, and attention indicators. You can explore the Color Mapping function further to find these features.
Don’t worry if you mess up your color mapping. If you make a mistake that makes the screen look terrible or the new scheme makes you nauseous, simply click the Defaults button on the Color Mapping screen and PC5250 will reset your screen colors to the program defaults.
For both the Window title and your screen colors, don’t forget to save your changes so that they come up the next time you start the session. Save your changes by clicking on File, Save from the PC5250 menu bar.

HTH

–Joe

Creating More Distinctive PC5250 Window Titles

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