• Admin Alert: The System i High Availability Roadmap

  October 24, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  I’ve recently been involved in a high availability (HA) project where the goal is to be able to switch processing from a failed System i box to a Capacity Backup (CBU) machine within one hour of failure. Growing from that experience, this week’s column is the first of an occasional series where I’ll discuss HA concepts and how i5/OS administrators can expedite continuous availability procedures in their shop. What Does High Availability Mean To a System i Shop? Although there are more complicated definitions for high availability, my favorite explanation is that high availability consists of whatever you do to

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• Controlling System i Shutdown Activities Using An Intelligent Power-Handling Program, Part II

  October 17, 2007 Brian Kelly

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. For Part I of this article, click here. Enabling a Power-Handling Program To Control System Activity During a Power Interruption Elle, When the UPSDLYTIM‘s automatic shutdown does not serve your installation needs, it is nice to know that there is a better way–an intelligent power handling program. When the unexpected arrives as it often does unexpectedly, a more controllable and granular approach to a system shutdown can save the day or at least save your system so it will run tomorrow. The power-handling program that IBM

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• Converting LF to CRLF in IFS Files

  October 17, 2007 Hey, Ted

  I had a situation where I wanted to change the end-of-line character from linefeed to carriage-return/linefeed to make a JavaScript file on the Integrated File System more readable in Notepad. I stumbled upon EDIT FILE (EDTF), F15, option 5. Then, after a little searching, I found your articles. Talk about reinventing the wheel! I was surprised that changing end-of-line characters was not part of the CHANGE ATTRIBUTE (CHGATR) command (or some other command). Is there any chance you could share a Qshell solution that converts LF to CRLF? I love using Qshell when I can, but

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• Reader Feedback: More on Vendor Names and Changing System Names

  October 17, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  This week, let’s took a look at a few emails that I received concerning some of my recent Admin Alert columns. These emails contain more information on how to retrieve system information for vendors and the relationship between changing your i5/OS system name and iSeries Access for Windows PC5250 connections. Regarding my article, “What Vendors Want to Know (and How to Get It)” that described different ways to retrieve system information, Elvis Budimlic of Centerfield Technology had this to add: We’ve faced this issue as well. Our solution was to create a command for customer download that provides all

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• Controlling System i Shutdown Activities Using an Intelligent Power-Handling Program, Part I

  October 10, 2007 Hey Brian

  It happened. We had our system about a year and we had a power crash over the weekend. Yes, we have a UPS, but that does not mean that when the system was starved for power it did not come crashing down, and things got worse after that. When we got the UPS, the boss decided that we would get the version that kept the system up for eight minutes instead of getting the extra battery for 37 minutes. We set the delay timer (QUPSDLYTIM) at two minutes. How is it that we crashed so hard? From this

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• Programmatically Import Excel Worksheets Using IBM’s ActiveX Object Library

  October 10, 2007 Michael Sansoterra

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. Everybody likes to export DB2 data to an Excel spreadsheet. It’s quick and easy, and there are plenty of ways to do it. On the other hand, I’m often asked by people, including fellow developers, to assist them with importing an Excel worksheet into a DB2 table. In fact, what developer hasn’t had the experience of a bean counter asking for assistance in uploading a spreadsheet into an ERP system? Importing native Excel worksheets has always had some measure of difficulty. There are headings to worry about, date

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• Admin Alert: Remotely Accessing an HMC System Console, Part 2

  October 10, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  Last week, I began demonstrating a technique to allow a remote 5250 session to attach to and run an i5/OS system console located on a Hardware Management Console (HMC). In part 1, I provided details on configuring the HMC to accept remote 5250 sessions. This week, I’ll examine the PC side and look at configuring an iSeries Access for Windows session to access the system console on the HMC. Ready for Connection As mentioned last week, configuring an HMC to allow remote access to an i5 partition’s system console is a relatively simple affair. It consists of the following

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• IFS Commands Give You Generic Access

  October 3, 2007 Bruce Guetzkow

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. Many i5/OS commands allow you to enter a generic name, such as OBJ*, to reference a collection of objects all beginning with the string OBJ. For example, the Delete File (DLTF) command allows you to delete a group of files using a generic name. Unfortunately there are some commands where generic names are not an option, like the Change Object Owner (CHGOBJOWN) command. The solution for some of these commands is to use their Integrated File System (IFS) equivalents. Starting at the

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• APIs Sometimes Fail (But Programmers Don’t Have To)

  October 3, 2007 Ted Holt

  My ambition is to eventually be as smart as my teenagers. Some days I think I’ll make it. After all, my old man became downright brilliant once I left home and had to start paying my own bills. On other days, like days when I try to write computer programs, I have the gravest of doubts. One of those days occurred recently, when I spent half a day trying to find a bug in my code. It turned out that a call to the Send Program Message API, QMHSNDPM, was failing, and I wasn’t bothering to check whether the

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• Admin Alert: Remotely Accessing an HMC System Console, Part 1

  October 3, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  The problem with i5/OS system consoles is that they are usually locked away in secured areas, and the only way that most people can use them is to go to the computer room. This week and next, I’ll demonstrate a technique for using a remote 5250 session to access a system console on the Hardware Management Console (HMC) without leaving your desk. Why Do I Need to Remotely Access My System Console? Most System i and iSeries administrators don’t mind walking to the computer room to use the system console if the console is in the same building, preferably on

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