Major Bug In IBM i Access Client Solutions

May 3, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Stop. Don’t click that mouse or hit Enter just yet. There is a major bug in Access Client Solutions 1.1.8.7. Here is the story that we got from one of the many Dougs we know in the IBM i Rebel Alliance, in this case J Douglas Robertson, who is a certified maintainer of IBM Power Systems and who ran into the issue when doing the upgrade.

JD shares the workaround he figured out after the ACS console flew up its own port hole after the upgrade. These words are straight from his own mouth, in italics so you know JD is talking:

Here is the work around to fix ACS 1.1.8.7 if you just installed this or upgraded a customer and can’t acquire Console or VCP session. This appears as a problem that is related to SSL and Certificates but it is actually a problem where the new JAR–Bundle is not able to provide the small grey screen that says something about accepting the following certificates after installing ACS for the first time or after upgrades. Please note that I was onsite and used my laptop at an IBM i shop today and my 1.1.8.7 Console worked just fine so this doesn’t happen all the time but when it does the Console will be dead and the VCP will also return the same error MSGSSL002 error message.

Here are the notes from IBM Ticket # TS005552792:

So the support notes did not say if you need to run this command as ADMIN or not but, we did anyway. Also, you have to have the “Path” all the way into the ACS Folder where the acslaunch_win-64.exe command is located, not just the ACS Folder itself and of course this has to be the Unzipped Folder. When you run this command it will automatically roll over to the 32-Bit JAVA module if it can find the 64-bit Java module so support said to make sure you select the x86-64 folder. Also make sure that ACS is closed and not running in the background. I was having so much trouble with this command I rebooted but it turned out that I was just not extending my Path all the way into the folder to where the .exe file was located so it could not find the program where the updated SSL certificates corrected and verified. Make sure that you enter your “<Console – IP>“where listed above.

When done, just open ACS and open the console and all should be corrected.

By the way, JD thought that IBM was going to send him the beta of ACS 1.1.8.8 to install and test and he planned to report back on anything he found out about this. It didn’t happen.

We originally said that IBM was pulling it and replacing it soon with ACS 1.1.8.8. We were expecting it last week, but it did not happen. Since this story ran, IBM has said that customers moving to ACS 1.1.8.7 should do so and then call into IBM and get a patch called TESTFIX_1.1.8.7 and apply it. Here is a link to the document that tells you how to do this and here is the link to the patch itself. This is a Java JAR file and it only applies to ACS consoles.

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