IBMi

Open-Source Package Management Signon

For those of you who follow either my articles on PowerWire or my videos at learning.formaserve.co.uk you will know my inclination over the past few years is in Open-sourceon the IBM i, and one of the easiest ways of obtaining packages is via the Access for Client

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ODBC & Node.js on IBM i

In this article I will be looking at database access using Node.js on our favourite platform the IBM i. A bit of background info first. One of the first applications we wrote in Node.js had to access an audit log that was stored as a traditional table, physical

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A screen a story – collateral benefits

In today’s world when reading about IBM i it is hard to avoid articles dealing with application modernization. Being a system administrator, I use applications too. What about them, do they need modernization too? Well, let us have a look at the two screens shown below: The first screenshot

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A Java on IBM i Intro

A bit different this one.  I was recently asked by a fellow IBM Champion to give him a quick run through on Java on the IBM i, so I thought I would write a quick article on this topic for others out there. Installation of Java Java has to be

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A Screen a Story - to desire or to require

You may think that a Hardware Management Console (HMC) is a luxury that is only needed by larger POWER user environments but in this article I am going to try and explain why you should think again. A LAN console may be technically sufficient for your needs and does not

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IBM i on IBM Power Systems the next ten years of innovation

Join Northdoor and IBM to celebrate the innovations in both IBM i and Power Systems.  As we approach the launch of POWER10, we will discuss the next generation and how clients can take advantage of new hybrid cloud offerings and we will talk about the future roadmap of IBM i.

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Removing drives from guest partitions

“You’ve not done a lot during lockdown, so it’s time to trim the fat.” Technically words from my GP, but I figured perhaps I could apply it to my partitions as well! To set the scene, I want to do a system save of a Power7 with the

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A screen a story – to include or to filter

Once in while an ad hoc job ends up on your desk. A while ago I had such a day, although the disk space usage was around 70 %, the backup of the Integrated file System (IFS) part of the system was consuming more and more time every night. The decision

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Who is using that IFS object?

Sometimes the simplest of questions that come into our support desk can fill us with dread and before the advent of IBM i Services, finding out which job had a lock on a particular IFS object was definitely one such question. Back in the olden days we would have to

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Interview with Mike Ryan, Chairman of i-UG. What have they been doing over the last 12-months? and what to expect at their event next month!

PowerWire (PW): – Hello Mike, its nice to chat to you again, the last time we spoke was in Spring last year when the pandemic first broke out and i-UG where rearranging their annual conference, International i-Power, to a virtual format.  A lot has happened since then, and I think most

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IBM Champion Tweets

As you will hopefully know, in my last few arcticles for PowerWire, I have been writing about retreiving tweets and storing them in a SQLite database on the IBM i. I have a scheduled job on my IBM i that finds the tweets that have the hash tag #IBMChampion. Now

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A screen a story – PM400 and the day after (30th September 2020)

The term “IBM Performance Management for Power Systems” does most likely not immediately ring a bell, my guess is “PM400” does. It was offered for free and as a Dutchman, after I hear the word “free”, you have my attention. PM400 was a service offered by IBM for free, performance

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More - What is eating my IFS?

Warning :- The main SQL statement may run for many minutes.  In my case just over 1:30 elapsed and 35 CPU seconds, but I only have 222,000 objects in my IFS on a Power 9.  I have run the QSRSRV (see below) on a Power 7+ with around

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PDF Direct Printing from IBM i

What happens when you want to print a PDF from IBM i via a regular IBM i writer and output queue, where do you start with that?  Let’s face it, there is no native PRTPDF (Print PDF) command in IBM i. Well, this was the question I received the

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SQLite and a Node API

my previous article, we went through how easy it was to call a Twitter API, searching for a string and storing that tweet in a SQLite database stored on the IBM i using Node.js. Before we get around to analysing the records we have stored over the last month

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IBM i Security - Duct Tape & String

Having recently watched the Helpsystems annual State of IBM i Security study, along with listening to Robin talk about it on the Incredible i Show, it seemed a good time to reflect on how I originally got introduced to the need for security. As the title suggests my solution at

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Configuring ACS Printer Emulation

Before I say another word on this, I have to declare that I personally feel that using ACS to run a Printer Emulation should be considered as a last resort.  It is great for Home Working, enabling you to print on your own printer when connected to the office via

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A screen a story – time to unlock yourself

We humans are creatures of habit, and of course some of these are bad habits. I am no judge here as I have my own set of habits too, good and bad, just ask my wife! As you may know, I am from the Netherlands and in my country, we

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SQLite – Store Tweets

In my previous article, I revealed how easy it is to use an open source database called SQLite on our IBM i server. If you need a refresher, that article can be found on the link here. In this article, I’ll show you all how easy it is to

IBMi

IBMi password - pick a number

We’ve all been there, the password expiration has come around (QPWDEXPITV) and you’re struggling to think of a new one that matches the password rules on your system. One day I decided “screw that, the system can pick for me”. Thus I started tinkering in NodeJS, as mentioned

IBMi

Easily Control that runaway job using IBM i Workload Groups

How to limit high CPU jobs easily If you have any jobs or users that, every now and then, manage to impact the system by using a large amount of CPU, this trick may help.  There is a catch!  This method only limits jobs that have more than 1 thread.

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IBM Power Systems Enhances Hybrid Cloud Capabilities with Red Hat

New pre-configured private cloud platform, innovative cloud-consumption payment model, and more Red Hat software now supported on IBM Power Virtual Servers BM (NYSE: IBM) announced availability of Red Hat software on IBM Power Systems as well as new IBM Power Systems hardware. These announcements further expand IBM Systems’s commitment

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SQLite – What is that?

In this article, I’m going to show you another database option we now have on our IBM i. All these choices!  Little did we think we would have any alternative for a database, we expected only to have the excellent DB2 for i. So, what is it? SQLite is

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Convert Spool File To PDF or Text File

On most systems I work on there are simply far too many spool files. Spool files are no doubt a useful source of information but what is also in no doubt is that spool file maintenance is one of the last tasks on anyone’s agenda. However, on every system

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Remain Software Milestone

NIEUWEGEIN, Netherlands — Remain Software released today the second Milestone of TD/OMS V13, Gravity V6, Remain API Studio V2, and MiWorkplace V1.25.0. In line with the company’s longstanding commitment to ongoing product and customer support, these new Milestones mark the second of three scheduled enhancements to the