Recommended PTFs for Enterprise Externder is Incomplete.

The list of V5R4 recommended PTFs for Enterprise Extender (EE) is incomplete. I had to open a PMR with the minions of our Lord Ib'm because the old testament SNA communiation controllers on our development coding system failed to connect to the production systems, so we were unable to use SAVRSTOBJ.

The support priest sent me the complete list of recommended PTFs for EE and we were missing three PTFs. I have since confirmed that those were probably the three that we needed because after applying them the systems are again able to communicate using the old protocol.

When I checked I found that the EE list noted above wasn't up to date. I've sent feedback to the keepers of the web site, but as a courtesy I thought I'd post the complete list here as well:

PTF	Release	Cumulative Tape	Modules
MF40235	540	7107	*HPRIP ctlr with exchange ID defined will not vary on and SDLC XID has problem if HPR=*YES.
MF43629	540	8305	*HPRIP ctlr with exchange ID defined will not vary on.
MF42291	540	8183	DLUR and HPRIP controllers go vary on pending after Activate instead of VARIED ON, CPA58D1. MSCP changed to allow DLUR to recover on VTAM deactivate or activate.
MF42499	540	8057	NETWORK ID ALWHPTWR and HPR are *YES, ICF applications fail w/CPF5535, jobs remain in a UNKNOWN state. Sequence of BAD XID network frames case EE to be improperly initialized with invalid controller's values.
MF42587	540	8057	EE HPRIP controller remains in VaryOnPending status with no XID's being sent out.
MF45692	540	1000	EE using HPR and RTP receives timeout error. application joblogs show CPF5355. APPN&SrcSink shows RTPburst timer did not expire AND EE/HPR CONNECTION STALLS AND NO DATA IS SENT
MF44200	540	8305	EE endnode unable to locate a CICS region on ZOS LPAR
MF43891	540	8305	LDLC remains in a reset status, LatePrenegotiation XID does not send a NULL XID on its own.
MF45851	540	1000	HPR config is active, but active connections lock up, When you vary off APPC *HPRIP controllers and vl 07000C1F occurs, the process to activate PTF. An IPL will be needed to reset error condition. AND EE/HPR stops sending data when incoming stream data packet missing
MF46217	540	1000	EE task may block streams on gate before error is sent back
MF46237	540	1000	Vary On HPRIP CTL fails after IPL, XID does not complete
MF44897	545	8305	DLUR and HPRIP controllers go vary on pending after Activate instead of VARIED ON, CPA58D1. MSCP changed to allow DLUR to recover on VTAM deactivate or activate.
MF45170	545	9104	NETWORK ID ALWHPTWR and HPR are *YES, ICF applications fail w/CPF5535, jobs remain in a UNKNOWN state. Sequence of BAD XID network frames case EE to be improperly initialized with invalid controller's values.
MF44262	545	8305	*HPRIP ctlr with exchange ID defined will not vary on.
MF45881	545	9104	HEA fc181X and Virtual Ethernet fc268C lossing data in UDP layer
MF46122	545	8305	NETWORK ID ALWHPTWR and HPR are *YES, ICF applications fail w/ CPF5535 and will now accept retransmitted frames in BIND.
MF43329	545	8183	Partition/system crash with srcB6005121 on vary of EE controller
MF44072	545	8183	EE HPRIP controller remains in VaryOnPending status with no XID's being sent out
	545	do not order - test status	MF44344 - EE/HPR ICF application fails. CPF5107 E015 unbind received RTP did not check for this error
MF46366	545	1000	Vary On HPRIP CTL fails after IPL, XID does not complete
MF46218	545	1000	EE task may block streams on gate before error is sent back
MF46063	545	1000	APPC using HPR/EE gets RTP timeout
MF46064	545	1000	EE endnode unable to locate a CICS region on ZOS LPAR

IBM PE's seven PTFs for V5R4.

While my pastoral duties at this community are normally rather dull, my favorite activity is working with the most holy code (i5/OS) and PTFs (Parchment Temporary Fixes). I especially love it when I find an error in the code that causes the cardinals and bishops in Rochester to do something drastic.

A couple months ago, as part of a HIPER recommendation, we installed PTF 5722SS1-SI34484. The following Monday morning the BACKUP job was looping forever waiting for an HTTP server job to end. We didn't associate it with the PTF right away because this isn't the first time the backup got held up by something like this. By the time we'd figured out that this was a trend we'd already installed another HIPER recommendation, PTF 5722SS1-SI34576, which superceded the one installed previously.

So we were now stuck in an untenable situation. We couldn't remove the PTF and we didn't want to reload the O/S. Being in this kind of pickle can really focus the mind. I ended up writing a program that detected these zombie HTTP server jobs and killed them with ENDJOBABN.

The minions of our Lord Ib'm eventually discovered that a thread in the HTTP job was prematurely destroying the list of open files. The job would then sit there forever waiting of the files to close not knowing that that list was gone. In the end they had to PE a bunch of PTF's and since two of them were HIPER recommendations the fixing PTF (SI35317) was also made a HIPER.

Final tally was seven PE'ed PTFs and one HIPER, all from one PMR.