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April Showers Bring May IBM i Security Vulnerabilities

May 8, 2024 Alex Woodie

IBM has patched more than a dozen security flaws in IBM i and related products this spring, including serious flaws in the operating system proper and the compilers, and a critical vulnerability in Administrative Runtime Expert that landed a nearly perfect CVSS Base score.

In the interest of time, let’s cover the security vulnerabilities in descending order of severity. That means we’re starting with the worst and then moving on to the slightly less worse.

ARE Flaw

The flaw reported in the Administration Runtime Expert for i (ARE), which IBM launched in 2010 to make it easier to manage IBM …
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Guru: How To Acquire The IBM i Administration Runtime Expert Product And PTFs

May 17, 2021 Dawn May

In past articles about the Administration Runtime Expert, I mentioned that you install the ARE licensed program product on your central system, but I never documented steps on how you acquire the 5733-ARE program product. I apologize for this oversight since, as it turns out, obtaining ARE is not immediately obvious.

To get the 5733-ARE product, you must log into the IBM Support website and go to your Entitled Systems Support page. Under My Entitled Software, select Software Downloads. You need to select your system that is entitled to IBM software, the category of IBM i, and then …
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The Ultimate Set Of Tools

December 14, 2020 Rob McNelly

Those of a certain age will certainly remember the moment in Fast Times At Ridgemont High when Jeff Spicoli got himself into a bind after he wrecked his friend’s car. Luckily, Spicoli’s dad was a TV repairman, and he had an ultimate set of tools. Spicoli knew that with those tools, he could fix it. That level of confidence is intoxicating, although in this case it was possibly misplaced.

I have a friend that lives around the corner from me that actually does have the ultimate set of tools, and knows how to use them. For example, he recently rebuilt …
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Guru: Manage PTFs With The Administration Runtime Expert

November 9, 2020 Dawn May

This fourth article in my series on using the Administration Runtime Expert (ARE) reviews how ARE is used to manage PTFs. This article assumes you have already learned the basics of how to use ARE from the prior articles.

PTF management with ARE features these key functions:
- Check your installed group PTF levels compared to the latest levels available from IBM
- Verify consistent PTF levels installed across multiple partitions
- Distribute PTF images to endpoint systems
- Optionally load and apply PTFs
The ARE Template Editor provides the interface to define your templates for PTF management.

Start by determining what type of …
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Guru: Use The Administration Runtime Expert To Validate Your Application Attributes

August 10, 2020 Dawn May

This third article in my series on using the Administration Runtime Expert (ARE) reviews how ARE can validate the attributes of your applications. This article assumes you have already learned the basics of how to use ARE from articles one and two.

There are an unlimited number of ways you can use ARE to validate application attributes. A few examples are:
- Verify application attributes on a single partition
- Verify application attributes are consistent across multiple partitions
- Verify application attributes in the test environment are the same as production
- Verify application authorities
When you are creating a template to validate …
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Guru: Use The Administration Runtime Expert To Validate Your System Configuration

June 22, 2020 Dawn May

Using the Administration Runtime Expert (ARE) to validate system configuration settings is an easy way to confirm configuration values are set the way you want them to be. You can use ARE to ensure these system configuration settings are consistent across multiple IBM i partitions or to verify settings have not changed on an individual partition. In this second in a series of articles on ARE, we’ll walk through the steps to set up a basic template to validate system configuration settings.

The first step is to identify what system configuration attributes you want to make sure are consistent or …
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Guru: Introduction to the Administration Runtime Expert

June 1, 2020 Dawn May

Business-critical applications must be up and running reliably without failure. When something unexpected occurs, you must identify the cause and correct it quickly. Whether you’re a developer launching a new application, enhancing an existing application, or maintaining a legacy application, or an administrator managing the infrastructure, we all want to find ways to make our jobs easier, and unexpected surprises are not fun. I expect the relentless push to do more with less is only going to intensify while the tolerance for failure keeps dropping. Yet identifying points of failure can be tricky as complexities scale.

IBM i offers a …
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April Showers Bring May IBM i Security Vulnerabilities

ARE Flaw

Guru: How To Acquire The IBM i Administration Runtime Expert Product And PTFs

The Ultimate Set Of Tools

Guru: Manage PTFs With The Administration Runtime Expert

Guru: Use The Administration Runtime Expert To Validate Your Application Attributes

Guru: Use The Administration Runtime Expert To Validate Your System Configuration

Guru: Introduction to the Administration Runtime Expert

Content archive

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