“You’ve not done a lot during lockdown, so it’s time to trim the fat.” Technically words from my GP, but I figured perhaps I could apply it to my partitions as well! To set the scene, I want to do a system save of a Power7 with the slight issue that the tape drive isn’t […]
IBM i Security – Duct Tape & String
Having recently watched the Helpsystems annual State of IBM i Security study, along with listening to Robin talk about it on the Incredible i Show, it seemed a good time to reflect on how I originally got introduced to the need for security. As the title suggests my solution at the time was a bit […]
IBMi password – pick a number
We’ve all been there, the password expiration has come around (QPWDEXPITV) and you’re struggling to think of a new one that matches the password rules on your system. One day I decided “screw that, the system can pick for me”. Thus I started tinkering in NodeJS, as mentioned in previous articles I’m not a GUI […]
My source is MIA – RTVCLSRC
A bit of a follow on to my article in July last year about checking the date of source against your program. I have a customer who for their sins continues to run a V5R4 partition, part of the reason for this is if you run ANZOBJCVN you’ll kill a small forest with the number […]
SAVE21 to the IFS – Worst, Idea, Ever
Maybe not quite the worst, but I imagine there’s a good selection of better ones, something to keep in the back pocket though. I originally wondered about this when I got to a customer site to do a full system save and their tape drive was acting up, fortunately I got it going again but […]
Logical File – more than the sum of its parts
An interesting problem I came across recently, completely self-inflicted as these things often are so hopefully a cautionary tale to avoid others repeating it! I was investigating disk space usage on a customer server, trying to figure out if they could do some housekeeping or if it was time for them to invest in some […]
Last signon date – set it yourself
Something that came up recently and jogged my memory for a tweak I made a few years ago. I was asked to confirm if a user had logged into a profile, now on the face of it a nice simple question and answer. WRKUSRPRF <username> and return the date I get on the screen. The […]
Leaving SEU behind part 2
For those who don’t remember, or are new to the newsletter, last year I did an article on ILEditor as a way to start to bring my code writing into the 21st century. I also mentioned in the article that there was a new version, ILEditor 2, in the works. This was released earlier in […]
Forgetting to recompile – check your dates
Something I mentioned on twitter a little while ago, I had a problem where someone had changed a source member but not recompiled it. As it happens they took out a line of code that the customer was quite keen on, so when 10+ years later the next poor sap came to amend the program […]
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 […]