• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 25

  June 28, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to your own personal IBM i Patch Wednesday and the IBM i PTF Guide that helps you figure out what patches to apply to your releases so you can keep current and therefore keep optimal in terms of performance, stability, and security.

  In this week’s rendition, we see that the High Availability Group has some new fixes for us. I am a week or two late in reporting them for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.2, but they are here and available for us. The newest fixes allow for additional logging for better error determination in special resynch …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 24

  June 21, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  It is interesting to note in this week’s IBM i PTF Guide that support for Samba Windows-style System Message Block (SMB) file serving has been added (in 5733-OPS, Option 11) and that it is being patched as needed. The Security PTF is because the Samba project has added bug and security fixes into the Samba 3.6 source that need to be included in the IBM i PASE package.

  Additionally, the HIPER and Security Group PTFs are being updated on V7R3 and V7R2, and the HIPERs on V7R1. As always, its recommended you stay as current as possible on at least …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 23

  June 14, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The only group updated this week was the SF99706 High Availability for V7R1 group. It has approximately 30 fixes, dealing with everything from missing disks to security breaches. It is well worth putting this HA group on your system if you are in a PowerHA world, or dealing with iASPs. For fun, we have listed a few of the PTFs in the group below:

  SI57128 - OSP-OTHER Fix Poodle vulnerability issue. The Poodle vulnerability issue was found in CIM. This has been fixed. Disable SSLv3, the RC4 and RSA Export ciphers in CIM.
  MF62562 - LIC-OTHER Additional Debug Support. Added 

  …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Numbers 21 And 22

  June 7, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The first couple of PTFs in the HIPER group are enough scare the wits out of you, so we just went with them. The important thing is to get them on your systems as soon as possible. You need to install the whole HIPER group.

  There was a time, a long, long time ago, when the CUME PTF pack sufficed when it came to keeping the system up to snuff. The CUME hasn’t contained all of the patches necessary to keep your systems running smoothly for quite a while, though. We need to pay attention to our Group PTFs and …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 20

  May 24, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  The most amazing fix that Big Blue has ever done for the techies who administer and program the IBM i platform happened last week: After 16 years of playing the same snippet of song in a loop for those dying on hold waiting for the support line, IBM finally relented and changed its tune.

  I had to hang up and call back to have them put me on hold so I could verify that it was not an accident. Amazing!

  In this week’s IBM i PTF Guide, there is a bunch of stuff going on. The MQ for IBM …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 19

  May 17, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Every Wednesday, the IBM i PTF Guide is included in The Four Hundred to help system administrators figure out what patches to put onto your machines and what ones you can ignore. The IBM i PTF Guide is available in downloadable spreadsheet format, and we have taken the archive back about two and a half years for your convenience.

  We are, as always, thankful to Doug Bidwell, the owner of IBM i business partner DLB Systems Associates, who has been putting together a guide to help OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i shops deal with patches for the past 19 years. …

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• IBM I PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 18

  May 10, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  This week in PTFs is all about HIPERs, Security, and Hardware patches. For the HIPERs, the biggie is excessive VLOGing fixes, plan cache tweaks, and cloud-init open source issues have been fixed. On the security front, there is a PTF that corrects RFC 2328 ambiguities and vulnerabilities.

  As for the hardware patches, there are a bunch, including:

  • MF63396 – Slider SES Firmware: 4170
  • Improved error handling during SES FW updates to prevent
  • possible device errors, such as SRCxxxx3002. Enhancements to connector Fault LED functionality
  • Diagnostic improvements for expander to power supply communication and failure detection
  • Improved error handling and reporting

  …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 17

  May 3, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Well, it is not an onslaught, but this week we have new PTF groups coming out of IBM for Java, HTTP Server for i, and DB2 Web Query for i V2.2.0. There is also new patches for Content Manager for IBM i 7.1 and new recommended fixes for SAP on all three currently supported releases.

  Well, maybe that is a bit of an onslaught. Rumor has it there are additional groups coming next week. It is like IBM i has its own Never Ending Story of preventive maintenance!

  The Java Group is interesting, a lot of action here. The group …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 15

  April 26, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  It has been two weeks since the last batch of HIPER PTFs came out, and while the PTF action is a little on the light side, there are a bunch of important updates that are out for IBM i 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3.

  As we have explained before in the IBM i PTF Guide, every two weeks Big Blue updates the High Impact and Pervasive, or HIPER, PTFs that are so critical to the system that in Big Blue’s opinion they should be on every system as quickly as possible. In general, any HIPER PTF that affects any operating …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Numbers 13 And 14

  April 19, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  IT Jungle took a hiatus with the Wednesday edition of The Four Hundred last week, so this week we are publishing two issues of the IBM i PTF Guide at the same time.

  In Volume 19, Number 14, Content Manager was the only new group with fixes during the week, so there was not much happening in the world of PTFs ahead of the Easter holiday. (And probably for that very reason.) When this happens – the “doldrums of fixes” – it generally means that there will be a deluge in the near future. We would like to urge you …

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