Category: Technical Articles
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POWER 9 G Models
IBM has recently announced a new version of the POWER9 scale out servers, these are the entry level servers that make up the P05, P10 and P20 Process Group ranges. If you’ve been paying attention to the past server announcements, you would be excused for assuming this was a POWER9+ as IBM did with the…
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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…
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A screen a story – it is in the details
A good quiz question for this article could have been: “When was the Index Advisor introduced?”. When searching the Internet I could find information going back to V3R6, which was released back in 1995. I think it is fair to say, we have all heard about it, but unfortunately we can not say that of…
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Windows Terminal & IBM i
Still continuing my theme of having a break from Node.js. This time we are looking at the new Microsoft Windows Terminal, also known as WT. And what a great product it is. We will be taking a look at how to use the new Microsoft Windows Terminal to automatically connect to the IBM i for…
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Ansible automation for IBM i
It’s been a few years since I last put together an article, but I’ve still remained involved with Power systems and IBM storage, specifically around VIOS and Spectrum Virtualize (Storwize). It is fair to say that the landscape is changing rapidly in IT with software driven technologies, cloud and devops. An age-old IT tenet is…
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Protecting against user enumeration in IBM i
I was discussing an RFE (Request For Enhancement) with some CEAC colleagues the other day. A request has been made for IBM to formally address the ability to Enumerate User Profiles on IBM i. Now, user enumeration is not something you hear a lot about in the IBM i world yet by default it is…
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DB2 for i – Services
This month we are going to have a break from node.js – I can hear the cheers from here! This time we are going to look at my favourite DB2 for i services. So, good place to start, what are DB2 services? They are SQL views, procedures and functions that give us access to system…
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A Screen a Story – a sizeable font?
In today’s world screen get bigger and bigger, resulting in screen resolutions following that trend. The highest I have seen so far is 3360 x 2100, but I to end there. Working with IBM i Access Clients Solutions, it annoyed me that the 5250 looked as show below: What is the use of setting 5250…
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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…
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IBM i PWRDWNSYS Exit Point
Following on from my introductory article earlier this month about exit points here’s a straightforward (and useful!) one to get you started. Question; have you or a colleague ever executed the PWRDWNSYS command by mistake? On a system with multiple LPAR’s running it is quite easy to forget which LPAR you are working on. Sometimes…
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A Screen a Story – i…i… Captain
Ever wondered about the firmware level of any adapter present in a POWER server? My guess is that you probably never have or never needed to. Allow me to tell you a story which took place at the beginning of April. It all started with messages in QSYSOPR at the weekend. Messages with ID CPPEA33…
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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…