Domino Diva

If you have DAOS implemented on the IBM i (iSeries, AS/400) platform, you need to be aware of two issues you can run into.  Both issues are referenced in tech note 1398097. 

The first issue is related to the 'tell daosmgr prune x' command.  When this command is executed on the iSeries, it ignores the number of days passed in on the command and defaults to 0. 

The second issue affects reading of the daos.cfg file.  If there are more than 40,000 .NLO files in a single DAOS subdirectory, the daos.cfg file is not read correctly.

If you are using DAOS on the IBM i, you should contact support to obtain the proper hotfixes to avoid running into these two issues.

There are two new IBM i blogs I would like to share with you.  The first blog, You and i, is a blog where the IBM i product manager (Craig Johnson) and chief architect (Steve Will), share what is going on with IBM i along with the technical details on how it works and what sets it apart.  If you have ever wondered what Single Level Store is and why it makes the iSeries better, check out Steve's lastest blog post.

The other new blog, iCan, is written by Dawn May.  Dawn is the technical lead and business architect for IBM i.  The focus of her blog is to share features of the operating system.  I know from working with my customers that it's really hard for most customers to keep on top of all of the new enhancements added each release.  Dawn's blog will shed light on various features the system offers.

I hope you find these blogs helpful.

The Work with Domino Servers (WRKDOMSVR) command is a wonderful utility provided with the Lotus Domino server code for i5/OS.  It provides an interface to work with Domino servers in many ways.  The most commonly used features are starting, stopping, and displaying or working with the Domino console.  There are some options on the WRKDOMSVR command that are seldom used, however they provide some very helpful features.  These features aren't displayed on the main screen for this command, therefore I am finding few people know about them.

These hidden features are options 14, 15, and 16.  Option 14 is 'Work with support files'.  This option takes you directly into the IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT subdirectory of the Domino server's data directory.  Option 15 is 'Work with NSDs' which takes you into the IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT directory and only displays the NSD files.  Option 16 is 'Dump server call stacks'.  This option is especially helpful if you are experiencing a server hang condition or other critical issues with your Domino server.  By using option 16, call stacks are dumped for each active job running on the Domino server.  It used to be that you had to download a special utility to dump the call stacks, now it is as simple as specifying option 16 next to the Domino server!

There is one other option I would like to point out.  This one is shown on the main WRKDOMSVR screen, however I find it is not used as frequently as it could be.  This is option 9, 'Work server jobs'.  I find I use this option all the time.  I can quicly see which jobs are running on the Domino server, what their run state is, how much CPU they are consuming, and the number of threads that are active under the job.  When working with customers, I often see people switching to WRKACTJOB to see the jobs running under the Domino subsystem.  Once I show them how easy it is to get to the information they're looking for by simplying selecting option 9, they are quite pleased.

This is one name change that went over extremely smoothly, in fact, I think it is the only name change for the operating system that has gone over so smoothly.  For a little background, the System i (AS/400, iSeries) has always had a different name for the operating system associated with the hardware platform.  When the System was known as the AS/400, the operating system was called OS/400.  The OS/400 name was kept when the system was renamed to iSeries.  Then along came the name change to System i.  At that time, the new hardware was Power 5, so the operating system was renamed to i5/OS.  We have had that name for the past few years, now along comes the new Power 6 hardware, uh, wait, guess we have to rename the operating system again.

 

Luckily they didn't decide to rename the OS to i6/OS, as you can guess what would happen when Power 7, 8, ... would come along.  Instead, the name has been shortened to simply 'i'.  Mark Shearer, VP of Marketing and Offerings for Business Systems, made this announcement last Wednesday morning at the IBM Town Hall session at the COMMON conference.  This is the first time I have seen an IBM executive get up in front of the COMMON crowd and announce a name change and actually get applause.  I think it helped that everyone knew it would be an endless cycle of renamings if the operating system name continued to follow the hardware version.  So now we have 'i' running on IBM Power Systems. 

 

The new name 'i', will also be known as 'i for Business', since this operating system is known for running business applications.  A positive that will come out of this announcement is that we will actually be seeing 'i for Business' in IBM advertistments, and no, it won't be hidden on some corner of the advertistment so tiny you can't read it!  Anytime the new Power Systems hardware is mentioned, all 3 operating systems that run on the hardware will also be advertised: i for Business, AIX, and Linux.