• 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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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 13

  April 5, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  It has been a good week for fixes, people of IBM i Land. The DB2 groups were released for V7R2 and V7R3, and the Performance Tools groups are out for all three V7 releases. Another good thing is that the MG tools announced a new version, and Option 24 on its main menu adds some great functionality for assisting in the management of PTFs on your system.

  But the big news is that the Java client has a new release, V1.1.7.0, with anxiously awaited new functionality. You can download the latest base package at this link: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/i/access/solutions.html.

  As I …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 12

  March 29, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  It is a bit quiet out there in PTF Land this week. But there has been some activity. There is a new HIPER group for each IBM i release that is currently supported, and there are tweaks to Backup and Recovery Groups for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. There are also some anomalies on other groups.

  For instance, the Must Gather tools usually go along at a pace of updating every two weeks, but now it has been over a month since an update came out. Go figure. . . . The new 5733-OPS Open Source licensed programs have not …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 10

  March 15, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Technical Refresh updates have been a boon for the IBM i base. They have allowed IBM to keep adding features and functions to the current IBM i operating system releases without in any way breaking compatibility with the hardware levels and application software that runs on them. But you have to be careful about falling behind with the Technology Refreshes.

  To be specific, as we explain in the TR tab in the IBM i PTF Guide, while the Technology Refresh updates do not happen that often, but when they do, this tab has all of the information that system …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 8

  March 1, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  It pays to be regular when it comes to systems management, and it is not a good thing to get too far behind. Take Windows Server as an example. With tens of millions of customers and plenty of bugs and security patches for this target-rich environment, Microsoft has to do everything in its power to try to keep the Windows installed base – both servers and PCs – patched and secured.

  Windows Update can be used to automatically apply patches as they come out in the wake of Patch Tuesday once a month, or customers can set up a dedicated …

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• Security Awareness: Eight More Patches For IBM i Vulns

  February 27, 2017 Alex Woodie

  National security awareness month isn’t until October, but that didn’t stop IBM from issuing a torrent of patches this month to address all kinds of security problems in its products. For IBM i specifically, Big Blue patched eight flaws found across the OpenSSH and OpenSSL libraries for the three IBM i OSes under support. The Power HMC also received numerous security patches, as did dozens of other IBM products.

  OpenSSL and OpenSSH have been the source of numerous security vulnerabilities over the past three years, ever since the Heartbleed flaw was found in OpenSSL. As more flaws are found in …

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