I’m sure you’ve heard that Navigator for i added support to manage PTFs in the 7.2 release. I thought it was about time to review the PTF management capabilities you can now do from the browser. This is one more step along the way of providing function that was previously only available from System i Navigator into the Web console.
PTF management in Navigator gives you the capability to display, load, apply, install, remove and clean up PTFs. You can also work with PTF groups. The PTF tasks are available under the Configuration and Service tasks in the navigation area, as the following screen capture shows:
You will also want to be aware of the PTF tasks that you find under the All Tasks section within the Configuration and Service task. You will find the capability to display PTFs and PTF Groups as well as install PTFs, and the “Compare and Update” feature that was previously part of Management Central in System i Navigator. The following screen capture shows the PTF tasks under All Tasks:
By using the Navigator PTF tasks, you can do all of the following:
- Display PTFs for a specified product
- Display all PTF groups on an IBM i partition
- Load selected PTFs
- Apply selected PTFs
- Install selected PTFs
- Remove selected PTFs
- Clean up PTFs to delete PTF save files and cover letters for selected PTFs or all PTFs for selected products
- Display the properties of an individual PTF
- Send PTFs to another system or to a group of systems
- Send and install PTFs to send PTFs and immediately install them on the target system or group or systems
- Compare and update PTFs – compare PTFs or PTF groups installed on target systems or group of systems and optionally update those target systems if they are missing PTFs.
Note that if you are sending PTFs to another system, both systems must be at the same release level.
If you use IBM’s Fix Central to download your PTFs directly to your IBM i partition, you can acquire and install PTFs without ever signing on to the green screen. Perhaps some of you reading this blog might find that frightening. Hopefully many of you reading this blog find it intriguing and will give it a try.
Remember that you can use the Navigator search function if you don’t remember where a particular task is located in the navigation tree. If you type in “PTF” or “DSPPTF,” you will find links to the PTF tasks.
As with all features in Navigator, the underlying implementation uses APIs or command interfaces; all the logging and tracking you are familiar with for PTFs management will continue to occur.
There’s far too much functionality to describe in this blog so you will want to take some time to explore the new PTF capability yourself. You can also read more about the PTF Management support in section 2.1.7 in the IBM i 7.2 Technical Overview Redbooks publication.
This blog post was edited for currency on April 12, 2020.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.