• Doing Disaster Recovery Planning Right For Your IBM Power Iron

  October 19, 2022 Jason Hardy

  As I was writing this article, I saw this in my LinkedIn news feed, according to Axios.com: “billion-dollar weather disasters now happen once every 18 days.” My perception was that the United States was getting more frequent significant weather events and it turns out that data from the National Weather Service backs that up.

  Now add in hardware/software failures, cyber security events and local disasters (fire, water damage, power outages) and it makes sense that disaster recovery is one of the top challenges facing CIOs today. If this is a topic you are contemplating, here are a few questions to …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 42

  October 17, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  The hot news this week, which we have reported about previously and which we will be drilling down into more deeply, is that the Fall 2022 Tech Refresh updates for IBM i have been announced and will be generally available on December 2. The theme from IBM is “Let’s create a new level of integrated simplicity,” and you can see more about IBM i 7.5 Technology Refresh 1 at this link and more about IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh 7 at that link.

  Keep checking out The Four Hundred as we drill down into new details related to the …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 41

  October 10, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  Just a reminder in case you didn’t see it last week: End of Marketing for IBM i 7.3 is 4/28/23 and end of standard support for IBM i 7.3 is 9/30/23. You can read IBM’s support statement about it here and you can see our related coverage on it there.

  Also: QMGTOOLS and FTP Credentials required for Enhanced Customer Data Repository (ECuRep), find out more at this link.

  Now, here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published:

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security
  • MustGather: How To Obtain and Install

  …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 40

  October 3, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  It’s the fall now, and in the wake of the September IBM i announcements, upgrade season has begun. Now, we will see if companies are in a mood to upgrade before the end of the year or will push it out into 2023.

  This week, we want to let you know that QMGTOOLS and FTP Credentials required for Enhanced Customer Data Repository (ECuRep), which you can find out more about here.

  Now, here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published:

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • IBM MQ for IBM i – v9.2.0/v9.3.0
  • TCP/IP

  …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 39

  September 26, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  Another week, another security vulnerability. This one could be a biggie, so pay attention. Security Bulletin: IBM Common Cryptographic Architecture (CCA) is vulnerable to denial of service (CVE-2022-22423), which you can find out more about here. The vulnerability can be fixed by applying a PTF to IBM i. Releases 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2 of IBM i will be fixed.  Each PTF bundles updates to CCA 5.x MTM for 4767 and CCA 7.x MTM for 4769, bringing their respective firmware levels to 5.7.12 and 7.3.44 or later, respectively.

  Here are the fixes for this particular vulnerability:

  IBM i release	

  …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 38

  September 19, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  It is a quiet week for PTFs, with two security vulnerabilities for the IBM i platform and not much else.

  We will start with Security Bulletin: Samba for IBM i is vulnerable to attacker obtaining sensitive information due to a memory leak with SMB1 requests (CVE-2022-32742), which you can find out more about at this link. Here are the fixes:

  IBM i Release	5770-SS1	PTF Number	
                  7.4		SI80816	
                  7.3		SI80815
  

  And then there is Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty for IBM i is vulnerable to identity spoofing with authenticated user and ability to bypass security restrictions due …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 37

  September 14, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  Some weeks are loud and noisy, like cats fighting, when it comes to IBM i PTFs, and some weeks are quiet, like mice trying to avoid the notice of the cats. This week is one of those quiet ones, albeit still with High Impact/Pervasive patches and Security patches for all four current IBM i releases.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published:

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security
  • MustGather: How To Obtain and Install QMGTOOLS

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security
  • MustGather: How To Obtain and Install QMGTOOLS

  PTF …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 36

  September 12, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  Let’s get right into it. There are PDF transform issues with IBM i 7.5. This issue was encountered by our friends in San Diego: Thank you, Nancy, for sharing! They were receiving “Transformation task cancelled due to a print fidelity error” when converting from SCS to PDF. IBM issued the following PTFs to fix the issue:

  PTF ID                                  
  SI79773	 5770SS1  
  SI79689  5770TS1
  SI79684  5770TS1
  

  Now, let’s turn to Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in IBM Java SDK affects IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty due to July 2022 CPU plus deferred CVE-2021-2163. You can see more at this …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 35

  August 29, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  Hello good people of IBM i Land. To start off, a reminder that the Memo To Users for supported releases were last updated April 2022. Clients should review the full “What’s New” details to understand recent changes and impact these may have. See the Links tab in the guide to access the Memo for your release, and, check periodically. these should be considered living documents, meaning, they evolve over time, and as such, read frequently!

  Also, ADMIN2 is back at 7.5! IBM turned it off at earlier releases to mitigate the log4j vulnerability in those releases. At V7R5 GA, the …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 34

  August 22, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  New defective PTFs – meaning PTFs to fix bugs in PTFs that should not be there to fix bugs in software that should not have been there in the first place – issued this week by IBM, and we are only now seeing that you could have been misinterpreting the meaning of “defective PTFs” all of these years. It is to fix defects in PTFs, as some of you might not be thinking. Language is not as good at communication as we sometimes give it credit for. There is always some ambiguity in the packets that are exchanged when two …

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