Lukas Beeler’s IT Blog

Okay, so we have the Year 2007, and i still see System i administrators order CDs and install them by swapping out one CD after the other. And if i ask them what they’re doing, i got told that image catalogs are too complicated.

So here is a complete, to the point walk through on how to install PTFs from an Image catalog.

Obtaining the images

Step 1 is to obtain the necessary disk images. All you need is a computer with a web browser, you don’t even need java support anymore (YAY!).

Under V5R4, it’s also possible to download the images using SNDPTFORD. This hasn’t always worked for me, and monitoring it was always pretty sketchy.

Go to: IBM Fix Central. As i can’t remember such a stupid URL, i always search Google for “iseries fix central”, which has worked fine for me since a few years.

Next you will need to log on with your IBM ID. You can create one if you don’t have one already, it’s pretty painless and requires no other resources.

Then you’re in the PTF selection menu. You will need to select the topmost, even if it says “Documents”. You can’t order Groups and CUM in the same order, so just reuse these steps after completing the CUM order. Click “Add to my Download List”. If you are on your second pass, trying to order the Group PTFs, you should make sure that the download list is cleared before you add the Group PTFS to your list.

Next, make sure that you select “Do not connect to my System”, [x] “Include requisite PTF”, and use FTP for the download. You will receive these instructions by Mail.

After clicking continue, you will land on the Summary page, where you can see if you order succeeded. You will now receive two E-Mails, one with an order confirmation, and one with the FTP data. The second can take quite a while, sometimes more than an hour. You should now place a second order for all Groups that might affect you.

Both Exchange’s IMF and SpamAssassin like to classify the Mails sent by IBM as spam. If you don’t have it in an hour, make sure to check your Spambin.

Downloading the images

This is Step 2. You get an E-Mail from IBM with all the infos you will need. I usually download the Images to a Windows Server using FileZilla, because it supports multiple connections (IBM has a per-connection speed limit). But you can also download them with Internet Explorer, or with the FTP Client directly on your System i - make sure to always use binary mode, the System i client does _not_ default to that.

No matter what you do, you will need to save the images in the IFS. I usually use the path /CUMPTF, but any will do.

Use MKDIR '/CUMPTF' to create the directory, and then use the Windows commandline FTP client to upload it. Make sure that your first command is “cd /CUMPTF”, this will make sure that you’re using the IFS.

Creating the image catalog and the virtual optical device

Okay, welcome to step 3.

First, we create an optical device for the image catalog. This needs to be done only once per i5/OS instance.

CRTDEVOPT DEVD(OPTVRT01)
RSRCNAME(*VRT)
TEXT('Virtual optical device for image catalogs')

Note that by default the device is varied off. We will need to vary it on before using it.

VRYCFG CFGOBJ(OPTVRT01)
CFGTYPE(*DEV)
STATUS(*ON)

Then, we will need to create the image catalog.

CRTIMGCLG IMGCLG(CUMPTF)
DIR('/CUMPTF')
CRTDIR(*NO)

We will need to add all files to the image catalog. You will need to use this command once per image file. It doesn’t matter in what sequence you add them, though. The important part here is *FROMFILE, which will make sure that the Image file you already uploaded is reused (and not copied).

ADDIMGCLGE IMGCLG(CUMPTF)
FROMFILE('/CUMPTF/SF99504_1.bin')
TOFILE(*FROMFILE)

The last step is to load the Image Catalog. Use WRKIMGCLG, and then Option 8 to load the image. Then use Option 10 to sort and verify the Images, make sure to choose *PTF, to reorder the items.

Applying the PTFs

Okay, this is rather easy, and you should already know this. Type GO PTF, select Option 8, choose OPTVRT01 as a device, and then make sure that the media option is on number 2. I won’t go into details here, because most people have more experience with this than i do.

Update: Fixed a missing sentence.