• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 3: Important Update For Spectre/Meltdown

  January 22, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  There has been an important development in the area of the Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities as it relates to Power Systems. As you can see from this follow-on notice from January 15, IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has these vulnerabilities classified as “High Severity,” which is more a reflection about the potential threat they represent, given the nature of speculative execution of Power (and other) processors, rather than because of an actual exploit that is in the wild that is using these vulnerabilities to get access to unauthorized information on systems.

  We have a little more …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 2

  January 17, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  Spectre and Meltdown. Just the names are scary, and kind of remind you of a James Bond thriller! From an IBM i perspective, we should be ready, but hold on just a little bit longer until the story plays out. There is a licensed internal code, or LIC, PTF out for each of the release:

  • V7R3 – MF64551
  • V7R2 – MF64552
  • V7R1 – MF64553

  These can be ordered individually, but are not as yet included in either the HIPER or Security PTF Groups. (That seems strange!)

  In the cover letters for the LIC PTFs, it states that they can be …

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• Update On The Spectre And Meltdown Patches For Power

  January 15, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When it comes to the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities that hit as the new year was getting going, the important word to ponder is “mitigated.” Everyone is talking about mitigating the issue, but no one is using the word “fixed.” As we discussed last week, one of the two types of Spectre vulnerabilities – the Variant 2 known as branch target injection – is particularly tricky to hack and to fix, so IT vendors are choosing their words very carefully.

  The odds were that unintended consequences for such a low-level fix will occur, so you can …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, The Last Four Weeks

  January 10, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  IT Jungle went on hiatus in the middle of December, as it does every year, but the PTF beat just keeps on rolling even if the presses don’t. So that means we have a backlog of IBM i PTF Guides to get through here in the first week of publishing The Four Hundred here in 2018.

  Let’s take them in chronological order so we don’t lose our minds.

  In Volume 19, Number 50 of the IBM i PTF Guide, there was not much happening that week because the holiday season was in even fuller effect. I found the following …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 48

  December 6, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  This week, in Number 48, we have HIPERs (again!), Security, and MQ Groups, as well as some great information on WebSphere to share with all. The HIPERs are about new GA markers, and fixing flight recorder formatting. The Security fixes are about patching SSH for the latest CVE notifications. The MQ message queuing middleware group is about delivering the MQM400 Cumulative fix pack #80008.

  There are also new Recommended Fixes for Telnet, pertaining to memory leaks, and better tracing.

  Here’s the breakdown by release:

  V7R3

  • SI65503
  • MF62915

  V7R2

  • SI65502
  • MF63206

  V7R1

  • SI65496
  • MF62916

  One last thing: IBM published an Official …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Numbers 45 And 46

  November 28, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  There has not been much happening in the past several weeks in IBM i PTF Land, but here is a roundup of the little bit that that did happen.

  In the IBM i PTF Guide Number 45, we have new groups for the HTTP Server and Open Source. If you haven’t checked out the open source licensed programs yet, you can find it at this link.

  In Number 46 of the IBM i PTF Guide, there were Recommended Fixes for V7R3, V7R2, and V7R1. There were also patches for the Cryptographic Services/DCM and Cryptographic Co-processor for Power Systems, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 44

  November 15, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The action this week in the IBM i PTF Guide is all in HIPERs for all three releases and in the Security groups for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. Also, there is a recommended fix for IBM i 7.2, one of the baddies. The QMGtools were also updated for all releases.

  Also, we have an important reminder: Java 6 will be going out of support on December 31, 2017. So be sure to update your Java applications to Java 8 or Java 7 to ensure a safe and secure application environment.

  The PTF updates this week are as follows:

  IBM …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 44

  November 8, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The action this week in the IBM i PTF Guide is all in HIPERs for all three releases and in the Security groups for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. Also, there is a recommended fix for IBM i 7.2, one of the baddies. The QMGtools were also updated for all releases.

  Also, we have an important reminder: Java 6 will be going out of support on December 31, 2017. So be sure to update your Java applications to Java 8 or Java 7 to ensure a safe and secure application environment.

  The PTF updates this week are as follows:

  IBM …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 43

  November 1, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Hold onto your Halloween candy, there are new cumes on IBM i 7.2 and 7.3! You are going to need some sugar. And there is a formal announcement of the new Tech Refreshes, which we announced last week. The corresponding group (SF99717 for V7R2 and SF99727 for V7R3) can now be ordered. Yeah, those numbers are correct, one off for ease of remembering.

  This week we also have:

  • New Backup and Recovery and Performance Tools groups for all three supported releases
  • New DB2 groups for 7.2 and 7.3
  • New WAS V8.0 groups for 7.2 and 7.1.

  Also, keep an eye …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 42

  October 25, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  As you can see from this week’s IBM i PTF Guide, the latest Technology Refreshes are available. That’s TR3 (MF99203) for V7R3 and TR7 (MF99107) for V7R2. (There is not a TR for V7R1). We strongly recommend that you read the cover letters for the above PTFs because there are significant behavior issues that have changed and they tell you all about them.

  Included for your perusal this week, we have a new High Availability group for all three releases:

  • V7R3 – SF99876
  • V7R2 – SF99776
  • V7R1 – SF99706

  We also have an update to the HTTP server group …

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