Admin Alert: The Ins and Outs of Loading Licensed Program Products

October 11, 2006 Joe Hertvik

When installing third-party i5 software, most vendors provide a list of required i5/OS licensed programs that must also be installed so that their product works properly. However, not every IBM licensed program will always be available on your i5 or iSeries partition, and sometimes you have to locate installation media to add additional products. This week’s Admin Alert will help guide you through that process.

Introducing Our Example

To illustrate how to install i5/OS licensed program products (LPPs), I’ll review an example that recently happened in my shop. All the concepts described in this situation are applicable to most i5/OS and OS/400 licensed program installs, and it’s a good illustration of how to install additional IBM products on your system.

My example occurred as I was installing an adapter that was designed to work with Infor‘s ERP LX product. The installation manual called for a relatively new i5/OS licensed program called the XML Toolkit for iSeries to be installed on the partition. The licensed product number was 5733-XT1 and the manual called for me to install the *BASE option of the product, along with options 5 and 6 of the software. Beyond that, the vendor manual didn’t say much else about installing IBM’s product (it’s not Infor’s job), so I performed the following steps to locate, install, and double-check my installation to satisfy the vendor’s product needs:

I checked to see if the required program and options were already installed on my system. Many times popular licensed program options are already present on your partition, which foregoes the need for an additional LPP install altogether.
I located the software media that I needed to install the LPPs. Sometimes this turns into a treasure hunt as the installation software may need to be retrieved from any one of a number of places, including the media that you originally installed your operating system from; a LPP installation on another partition that you can save and restore to your target partition; or from ordering the product from IBM or the business partner who sold you the system.
I installed the product on my system and then double-checked the installation. This is the easiest part of the process but it still may contain a few pitfalls.

These steps are the basic template that I follow for installing IBM licensed products on my systems. Here are the nitty gritty details that will allow anyone to use this template to install new licensed program products as needed.

Step One: Checking to See if the Required Program and Options Are Already Installed

It’s relatively easy to determine whether a program or program option is installed on an i5 or iSeries system, and it can be checked by using either a green screen 5250 session or the graphical iSeries Navigator program (OpsNav) that comes with IBM’s iSeries Access for Windows product. To view a list of my installed LPPs and options from the green screen, I would execute the following Display Software Resources command (DSPSFWRSC)

DSPSFWRSC

I can also print a spooled file copy of my installed LPPs by running DSPSFWRSC this way:

DSPSFWRSC OUTPUT(*PRINT)

Or I can redirect my licensed program list to an output file by running DSPSFWRSC this way:

DSPSFWRSC OUTPUT(*OUTFILE) OUTFILE(library/file_name)

The spooled file and output file functions come in handy if I need to send this information to another person or company.

If I want to use OpsNav to view my licensed programs, I would open the OpsNav node that represents the i5 or iSeries connection for the partition that I want to examine. Inside that node, I would then open the Configuration and Service–>Software–>Installed Products path and I can see the exact same list of installed licensed products that appeared in the green-screen DSPSFWRSC command.

Although you can view the LPP list by using either technique, you should also be aware that the products and options are presented differently in each interface. In our example, if I am using the green-screen DSPSFWRSC command to look for product 5733-XT1 with the *BASE option, as well as options 5 and 6, the display would look like this if the product is present:

5733XT1   *BASE    5050    XML Toolkit for iSeries                    
5733XT1   *BASE    2924    XML Toolkit for iSeries                    
5733XT1   5        5050    XML Toolkit Option 5 (see documentation)   
5733XT1   6        5050    XML Toolkit Option 6 (see documentation)

But if I’m using iSeries Navigator to view my products, the same installed products would look like this under an OpsNav display.

5733XT1   0000     V1R1M0  XML Toolkit for iSeries                    
5733XT1   0005     V1R1M0  XML Toolkit Option 5 (see documentation)   
5733XT1   0006     V1R1M0  XML Toolkit Option 6 (see documentation)

Notice that the *BASE version is listed as ‘0000’ in OpsNav as opposed to the DSPSFWRSC version. Also notice that the version number of the installed product is listed in the OpsNav version by default. On the DSPSFWRSC version, the command lists the Feature code of each option and I would have to press the F11 key (Display libraries/releases) to determine the product version.

Once I examined the licensed products list, it’s a simple matter to determine whether or not the desired products and their options are installed. For our example, remember I am looking for the *BASE product and options 5 and 6 of the 5733-XT1 product to be installed. If I only have the *BASE product installed, I will still need to find the installation media and install all the product options that my third party software is calling for. The key is that if all the required products and options are already installed on my system, I am home free on my requirements and I can go back to installing my third party software. If the required licensed products aren’t installed, I would go on to the next step to find my installation source media.

Step Two: Locate the Software Media for Installing LPP and Options

When looking for IBM-supplied products, the first place to check is on the installation media that came with the system, if it’s available. The problem with going to media, however, is that the media itself is not labeled as to what licensed program products it contains. Rather, each CD is delivered with cryptic names such as I_BASE_01, B29XX_01, or D29XX_02, and these names do little or nothing to reveal what software product installation packages they contain.

To decode this puzzle, I can go to the iSeries Information Center and open a topic called Media Labels and Their Contents (note: this link brings up the i5/OS V5R4 version of Media Labels and Their Contents; to get to the i5/OS V5R3 version, click click here). There are two sub-topics called Standard Set Products and Keyed Set Products listed under Media Labels and Their Contents. The sub-topic pages list out exactly what products are contained on each installation CD that was delivered with the system. Once I use these topics to locate the CD containing the LPP that I want to install, I can use that CD to install the package on my partition.

If the software installation package isn’t on my installation CDs (or if I can’t find my installation CDs, which would be more typical in my case), I have two other options. First, I can check to see if the package is available on another partition that is running the same i5/OS or OS/400 version. If it is, I can save the LPP option to tape or to a save file, move it to my installing system, and then restore the licensed program on that partition. To save a licensed program, I would use the Save Licensed Program command (SAVLICPGM). I can run the command this way to save the 5733XT1 *BASE software for my example.

SAVLICPGM LICPGM(5733XT1) OPTION(*BASE) DEV(*SAVF) SAVF(Library_name/Save_file_name)

I can also save a licensed program to media by running SAVLICPGM this way:

SAVLICPGM LICPGM(5733XT1) DEV(device_name) OPTION(*BASE)

After saving, I can restore the saved licensed program to my target partition by using the Restore Licensed Program command (RSTLICPGM, which I’ll explain in step three).

The downside to using SAVLICPGM is that I can only save one licensed program option at a time in the Optional part to be saved parameter (OPTION). So for our example, since I needed to save the *BASE option and options 5 and 6 of the 5733-XT1 licensed program, I would have to run SAVLICPGM three times: once for each licensed program option that I am saving.

My second option for locating installation media is to investigate IBM’s Electronic Software Delivery Web site and determine if I am entitled to download my new software from Big Blue.

If I can’t find the program software on my installation media and I do not have the product already installed on another partition, my final option would be to contact IBM or the business partner I brought my machine from in hopes of getting some installation media containing the product.

Step Three: Installing the Product and Double-Checking the Installation

Once I have located my installation software (on CD, electronic delivery, save file, or on another media, such as tape), I am now ready to install the product on my machine. There are two ways to install licensed products: by using option 11 (Install licensed programs) in the Work with Licensed Programs menu; or by using the Restore Licensed Program command (RSTLICPGM) to restore the program and option from backup media.

To use the first option from the green-screen, I can enter the Work with Licensed Programs menu by typing the following command in my green-screen session:

GO LICPGM

On the Work with Licensed Programs screen that appears, I would select option 11 (Install Licensed Programs) and press Enter. On the blank input line of the Install Licensed Programs screen, I would type a 1=Install under the option column and enter the Licensed Program identifier (5733XT1, in our example) along with the product option number of the program that I want to install. To install the *BASE option and options 5 and 6 of the 5733XT1 program, I would enter all three entries (one after the other) into the input line of this screen:

        Licensed  Product                
Option  Program   Option   Description   
  1     5733XT1    *BASE                 
  1     5733XT1    5        
  1     5733XT1    6

Once all three of these options were added to my list, I could then press the Enter key and the program would prompt me as to whether I want to install these products. If I confirm the installation, the program displays an Install Options screen where I will be prompted to enter the installation device the licensed programs will be installed from, and a few other installation options (including whether to install both the language and program objects for the LPP and whether the system should be IPLed after the product is installed). If I press ENTER again, i5/OS will install the options from my media.

If I am restoring LPPs from a backup save file that was created by using the SAVLICPGM command, I can re-install (or install) the *BASE program option for 5733XT1 by using the Restore Licensed Program command (RSTLICPGM) like this.

RSTLICPGM LICPGM(5733XT1) DEV(*SAVF) OPTION(*BASE) SAVF(Library_name/Save_file_name)

If I am installing a saved copy of the program from other media (such as a tape drive), then I can run RSTLICPGM like this.

RSTLICPGM LICPGM(5733XT1) DEV(device_name) OPTION(*BASE)

It’s also worth remembering that when saving and restoring a licensed program to a different partition, I would need to run the RSTLICPGM command once for every program option that I am moving to that partition, just as I had to save each program option separately by using the SAVLICPGM command.

To verify that the programs were properly installed to my system, I can once again run the Display Software Resources command (DSPSFWRSC) and check to make sure that all the proper LPPs and options are now installed on my system. This way I can be sure that I installed all the correct programs and take corrective action if an LPP or program is missing from this list.

About Our Testing Environment

All configurations described in this article were tested on an i5 550 box running i5/OS V5R3. Most of the commands used here are also available in earlier versions of the i5/OS and OS/400 operating systems, so the configurations should be usable in prior releases but you may notice minor variations in these commands due to incremental command improvements that have occurred from release to release.

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