• Some Good Advice About Log4j Mitigation Gotchas

  January 24, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Apache Log4j logging utility written in Java and available since the end of the Dot Com Boom in early 2001, has been installed far and wide into many systems and systems software packages in the more than two decades it has been available. And that is why the zero-day security vulnerability discovered by Chinese computing giant Alibaba on November 24 last year and revealed on December 9 has caused so much concern.

  Log4j is everywhere and that means the Log4Shell vulnerability that Alibaba described makes it particularly scary. But before we get into some of the mitigation advice that …

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• In The IBM i Trenches With: IBM Champion Ash Giddings

  December 13, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It may be hard to believe, but not everybody who has worked on an AS/400, iSeries, System i, or IBM i platform is a programmer. Even if they care a great deal about programs and how they run on the boxes. Ash Giddings, who is an IBM Champion in 2021 and a newly appointed product manager at high availability software provider Maxava, is one such chap, and we got an opportunity to have a chat with Giddings about what is going on with performance management, systems management, disaster recovery, and high availability out there in the IBM i base.

  Like …

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• Guru: Physical System Performance

  November 15, 2021 Dawn May

  Almost all IBM i shops use logical partitioning and have several partitions on a single Powerbox. There may be several IBM i partitions, VIOS partitions, and possibly AIX or Linux on Power partitions. Regardless of what type of operating system is running in the partition, the hypervisor collects performance metrics for all partitions. These performance metrics are always being collected, and you can allow a partition access to these performance metrics. In the case of IBM i, this physical system performance data can be gathered by Collection Services. IBM documents this feature in Collecting and displaying CPU utilization for all …

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• Revenge Of The Zombie Green Screen

  October 30, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Don’t look now, but command line interfaces – which were supposed to have been killed off years ago at the hands of superior graphical user interfaces (GUIs) – are making a comeback in the general IT scene. And the command line love appears to be spilling over into the IBM i.

  Command line interfaces, or CLIs, never completely disappeared from the scene. Even Windows 10 users can summon the dark magic of the DOS prompt with a few tactical clicks of the keyboard, mouse, or (God forbid) touchscreen. But like crazy uncles and credit card debt, the CLI has largely …

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• Navigator For IBM i On A Zigzag Journey

  October 30, 2017 Dan Burger

  Navigator for IBM i provides system administrators with tools that prevent them from losing their marbles, or at least delaying that outcome until the boss mentions that grounds maintenance and window washing have been added to the list of sys admin responsibilities.

  Navigator continues to receive updates and enhancements, mostly based on filling in holes in the features and functionality that the product it replaced already possessed. IBM also takes requests from current users, which also find their way into future enhancement. But for the unskilled user trying to climb the learning curve, Navigator can be a frustrating stumble from …

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