Heads up for Those Installing v7.1

This is a heads up to any priest or lay operator planning to install v7.1 with cumulative PTF package C0229710 (or above). There is a chance that the initial IPL to apply 5770999-MF99001 (required technology refresh) could fail with SRC B600-0102. You would then be forced to drive to work and slip install LIC from your physical media.

Our lord Ib'm's support angels have instructed that one must first load PTF 5770SS1-SI40878 from the HIPER group CD image and apply it immediately. Then load PTF 5770999-MF50003 from the cumulative PTF package (currently superseded by MF50836 in the HIPER group PTF SF99709), set it to apply delayed, and IPL the system.

When the system comes up you can start installing the PTF package again. Be forewarned that your attempt to load it will result in a failure message, but this is probably nothing to be alarmed about. View previous messages and most likely you'll find that it'll be because the system wants you to IPL now to install the MF99001 PTF before anything else. Once this technology refresh PTF along with its pre and co-requisites have been applied you can continue loading and applying the rest of the cumulative PTF package. (Be sure the "initialize system is complete" message has been sent to QSYSOPR before IPLing the 2nd time.)

I was very surprised that none of this was in the instructions for the cumulative PTF package. I think it would behoove our lord Ib'm if at the very least its minions added this information to the cumulative PTF package PSP document as a heads up. For more information on the technical refresh PTF see this document: FAQ for Technical Refresh for R710.

Update (Nov 11, 2010): The minions of our lord Ib'm have "re-saved" (or re-spun) the I_BASE_01 LIC installation disk, so that it now contains the 5770999-MF99001 technology refresh, among other things. They're designating it as RS-710-B. The above problems I experienced installing v7.1 on two separate systems were presumably because I was using the re-save designated as RS-710-A, but that hasn't been proven. In any case, anyone upgrading to v7.1 is advised to install from the new re-save disk as it will probably save some headaches. For more information see this web page: IBM i Resaves.

Bug in Websphere Application Server v7.0 Migration

This is a heads-up to all worshipers of our Lord Ib'm who also use the Java liturgy known as "Websphere Application Server" (WAS) -and- who are intending to migrate their applications to WAS v7.0.

Our parish was using WAS v6.0 and we intended to upgrade the most holy O/S to v7.1. The "Memo to Users" encyclical warned us that WAS v6.0 wasn't supported under O/S v7.1. It does support WAS v6.1 and v7.0, so we decided to load the latest WAS version since it had been out for quite a while now.

The migration process steps themselves are actually very easy. All you have to do is execute a pre-migration script for all of the instances (or profiles) with applications you'll be moving over. Then create matching profile names (with different blocks of port numbers) in the new version of WAS. Then you do a post-migration and -viola- it's done and it works. (Amazing!)

Except in our case there was one problem with one of the application not "deploying" to the new version of WAS. I opened a PMR with the support minions of our Lord Ib'm and they requested all manner of logs. Then they had me zip up the pre-migration directory and send that in too.

It turned that the offending application had single-quote(') characters in its description and the pre-migration script had unwittingly embedded a syntax error in the Jython code it had written. When the post-migration ran, it encountered the syntax problem and stopped the deployment for that application.

The pre-migration should have "escaped" those single-quote(') characters in the description. The Ib'm minions manually corrected the Jython code and sent it back to me with instructions on how to run it. Thank the Lord Ib'm that my prayers to the support minions were heard because the corrected Jython code ran fine and deployed the problematic application.

This problem with the Jython code generation is corrected in v7.0.0.13 of WAS which is scheduled to be released for general availability on Oct 25th, 2010. If you have single-quote(') character(s) in the description(s) of your application(s) you should either remove them, or wait until you've had a chance to install that update to WAS, before attempting the migration.

Special *NULL CL Value Undocumented Since v6.1

We've all heard about the *NULL special value in ILE RPG. It's a nifty little item associated with pointer fields. You can use it to assign *NULL to a pointer field or in a conditional statement to test if a pointer is null. Did you know that CL has had a *NULL special value since v6.1? I didn't know about it because it doesn't appear anywhere in the v6.1 or v7.1 Information Center. Nor does it appear in the PDF formatted version of the CL Programming Concepts Guide. I only learned about it recently and am a little embarrassed to admit that I had included a "*NULL Special Value" as one of My Top 10 Requirements for CL Enhancements.

I currently have a PMR open with the support minions of our lord Ib'm for v7.1 concerning un-initialized pointer variables containing errant data at start-up time. (The problem doesn't occur on v5.4.) This has lead them to open an APAR SE45175 which they said would be closed as PE (Programming Error). This is only related to the subject at hand because at one point I let the support minion know that I wouldn't have even known about this problem if CL had some kind of *NULL special value like RPG currently has. He passed this comment to the saints of development and they responded that it actually did and it's had it since v6.1. They even included a little program I could compile to prove it.

After proving it I immediately re-scoured the "What's New in CL" sections of the Information Center for v6.1 and v7.1, but couldn't find anything. Then I searched the CL sections for both releases, but came up with nada. The support minion also searched through the Info Center and like me came up empty handed. He's since notified the powers that be to get that fixed but we might not see it documented until the next release.

I also asked around and fellow high priest Father Jerome Hughes was kind enough to pass along this link to a Power-Point presentation given by Ib'm saint Guy Vig at an Omni User Group ecumenical dinner. Discussion of the *NULL value can be found on slides 93 & 94.

In any case here's the small program that the saints of development passed onto me:

PGM
              DCL        VAR(&PTR1) TYPE(*PTR) ADDRESS(*NULL)
              DCL        VAR(&CHAR1) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(1)
              CHGVAR     VAR(&PTR1) VALUE(%ADDR(&CHAR1))
              CHGVAR     VAR(&PTR1) VALUE(*NULL)
              IF (&PTR1 *EQ *NULL) THEN(DO)
              SNDPGMMSG  MSG('The pointer is null')
              ENDDO
ENDPGM

As you can see *NULL can be used to initialize declarations (DCL) assignments (CHGVAR) and in conditional statements (IF).

UPDATE (10/06/10): Here's something pretty interesting. On a lark I compiled the program to TGTRLS(V5R4M0). I had to remove the ADDRESS(*NULL) parameter from the DCL statement, but other than that it compiled. I installed the program object to a v5.4 system and it ran exactly like it did on the v7.1 system. However when I FTPed the source to that system and compiled it the compile failed saying the "*NULL" was incompatible with the variable.

The Cult of Ib'm and the Most Holy iSeries

My sermon today concerns the deeper meaning of the cult of Ib'm and the future of its most holy computer, the iSeries.

By using the word "cult" I of course don't mean some fringe religion with only a few adherent, although we are slowly becoming that (but I digress). I mean it in the way of the ancients when they worshiped temporal objects that helped them survive and/or gave their lives meaning. For example, everyone knows that among the ancient Egyptians there was a cult of cat worship. It got its start, not top-down with prophets, visions, and visitations from the cat god, but bottom-up because it was the cats that kept the rodents in their grain stores under control.

In a recent Maxed Out blog post Chris Maxcer wrote, among other interesting things, that my blog is "not trying to disparage any religion". Of course he's right. There is no intended disparagement of any religions. If there are any computer geeks out there who are also adherents to the Abrahamic religions, please do not be offended by my conflation of the language of said religions with this little cult of ours. Outside of work many of us have pledged our souls to a deity (or pantheon of deities) of our choice, but at work our hearts belong to the lord Ib'm and its most holy computer, the iSeries; for not only does it help us survive but it gives our lives meaning.

Most of the readers of this blog are well versed in the worship our lord Ib'm and its most holy computer, but computer geeks everywhere generally are priests in the temples of other idols at the same time. Unlike its behavior in the distant past, Ib'm will no longer get wrathful and send down plagues upon your systems and withhold service when one worships idols. In fact, the minions of lord Ib'm should probably, if they're on the ball, redouble their efforts to get people away from those false religions.

It's nice when all of the worlds religions can play nice together and be worshiped at once, but life isn't always like that. In an earlier time and much larger parish than my current one, we had several of the most holy AS/400s. We even had a System/36 -and- there was some worship of the Sun god, the ancient pagan rites of the Unix daemons, and the goddess Sybase. I personally had nothing against the worship of these pagan deities in my parish. After all, the nature worship that is Unix is almost as old as the F.S. Project itself and both grew out of that ancient tradition of geekdom's distance past where the command line interface (CLI) held supreme.

Eventually some new PHB's came on board and without warning there was an inundation of adherents to the twin gods Hewlett and Packard, and their object of worship, the HPUX O/S. Along with HPUX came the twin Mephistopheles of Unix faith everywhere; I am of course speaking of the foul beasts Oracle and NT. The houses of worship for these deities did not hold the CLI in high regard. Theirs was a world of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that mesmerized and held the bean counters in a trance such that they couldn't resist these temptations.

The most high and benevolent Ib'm and his many saints and angels were powerless to stem the tide of GUI worship amongst my flock. The temples to both the Sun god and the Sybase goddess were destroyed. The small System/36 cult was suppressed and the iSeries became a minority cult among this new tide. Attendance at my parish shrank, until finally there was no parish anymore. I too was tempted to abandon my faith, but it would have meant becoming a novice again after so many years as a high priest, so I chose to remain an iSeries adherent, but that also meant moving on.

As our lord Ib'm has taught us time and again, change happens, and we've all had to get used to that. I can't say that it's been easy watching this transition take place in our community. I attend the ecumenical conventions and I'm struck by how few young people are there. It appears that we are all aging out and that gives me pause. In addition the holy of hollies itself is slowly being inundated with more and more aspects of the pagan Unix cults. So much so that one day we may find that our beloved iSeries has become a pSeries.

Our lord Ib'm makes the light of the truth of the most holy iSeries, but we are its keepers. We have it in our hands to rise up and perpetuate this calling that gives our lives meaning. We cannot wait for Ib'm to come down from on high and preach to the masses the benefits of our faith. That's not going to happen, so we have to do it ourselves. In the same Maxed Out post Chris also wrote that Bishops Paris and Gantner were out teaching RPG to some VB acolytes and they most certainly have garnered more than a few converts. (You can read their blog post on the subject here: Good News in i Land.) Our counterparts in Japan have taken up the reins of proselytizing the iSeries to the unwashed masses and doing very well from what I've read. If we all do the same there is so much we could potentially accomplish not only for our benefit, but for future generations.

Amen.