Informing the IBM Community

Author: David Shears

  • QMGTOOLS – Local update server

    I mentioned in the last article an issue with one of my partitions that I’m not allowing onto the network proper. One of the challenges this gives me is making sure I keep my software up to date, when I’m used to running a command to dial out. Specifically I’m talking about the Must Gather…

  • Telnet failure – check your encryption

    One that I’m not sure I want to admit how long it took me to find the answer, so I figure instead I’ll tell you all a story and hopefully it’s one more link out there with the solution. A bit of background, for one of our customers we have a utility to handle passthrough…

  • Backup the backup of your backup

    It may sound like we’re getting into some sort of recursion error, but I like to think of it as the poor mans VTL, Virtual Tape Library, and something you can try at home (I assume most of us are working at home right now.) A little bit of background, most of my customers are…

  • Everyone needs a hobby – Maths on IBM i

    First of all, credit to Simon Hutchinson @ RPGPGM.com and the article ‘Calculating prime numbers in RPG’ for reminding me of this. 8 years ago, when I was first learning RPG (and had slightly more hair than I do now, not sure if those two factors are related!) I decided to test some of what…

  • CLEANMAIL – the folly of assumption

    Bit of a short one this month as preparing for Year End tasks and shutdowns around the customers, but it gave me a little chuckle when I did it so maybe I can warn some people off the same fate! CLEANMAIL, if you aren’t familiar, is a utility from IBM that’s useful for removing old…

  • WRKRDBDIRE- I want data from that box..

    A bit of background to start with today, I’ve recently been learning how to setup NodeJS on IBM i (again big plug here for Andy Youens series to get you started.) After completing a few tutorials, I started looking at pulling data out of the local tables using the idb-connector package, more on that another…

  • Download Director – now with less Oracle

    For those of you who haven’t already read it, I’d highly recommend starting with Steve Bradshaws article “Do I need to pay for Java?” from January. After following the setup guide on the IBM site so that I was using OpenJ9 I was left with the question “I’d rather like to use Download Director, how…

  • Who invited SYSMSG

    Another in my catalogue of “everyone and their mother has done this if they needed to, but here’s a slight twist on it” articles. To set the scene, a customer of mine decided they want their Power server in an enquiry state and so setup some new generic profiles with generic menus sans all their…

  • Leaving SEU behind – ILEditor

    After sitting in a number of the SiD sessions at the international i-Power event this year, one key fact I took away is “you really need to get off SEU.” However, I’m a little cost-averse so can’t quite justify jumping straight to RDi, luckily the open source community is ready to step into that gap.…

  • Node-red on i – 5733OPS not required

    Inspired by Andy Youens series of articles on Node and Open Source on IBMi,  I decided to try setting up Node-red on one of my servers. I’ve also got to give credit to a post on the IBM developer site: https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/i-running-node-red/ The main difference is that where the walk-through uses licensed program 5733OPS I decided…

  • “What am I letting myself in for?”

      “What am I letting myself in for? “ One of many thoughts going through the mind of the Aspie on his way to the i-power event in the middle of his third minor panic attack. Maybe not the intro you’re expecting, but I’d like to talk now about why it’s worth the trip. For…

  • HMC’s – descriptive errors optional

    I’ve been having great fun recently trying to upgrade one of my HMCs and figure I shall now share with you all the woes in the hope that the next person to have this problem can find the solution a little easier. If you read all the way through there’s also a couple of bits…