PTF Install Play by Play

ATTENTION SUBSCRIBERS:

11 September 2019 – CUME PTF INSTALL IN PROCESS.
WHILE THIS IS ONGOING, CONNECTIVITY TO THE V7R1 MACHINE WILL BE DISABLED.

THIS MESSAGE WILL BE REMOVED WHEN THIS PROCESS IS COMPLETE.

This wasn’t expected to take this long, but I had to do a separate ‘technology refresh’ to TR8 before I could kick off this latest cume. TR8 was done last night, and required a second reboot this morning to finish it’s magic.

The new cume install has already been started with the ‘automatic reboot’ option selected, so I don’t want anyone logged in whenever that reboot decides to happen. As of 10am EDT (about 3 hours into the cume install), it’s still on the first of two cume DVD’s, and then there’s a stack of ten group PTF DVDs (including one more ‘technology refresh’ to TR11) to go through as well. With the technology refresh in the mix, it’s fairly likely that this install will require at least two reboots instead of the typical one. So, best to keep everyone out of the sandbox until this root canal is finished.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s been a couple years since the last cume install.

I’ll post updates here from time to time.
10:15am EDT – Cume disk 1, PTF file 45 of 53…
10:30am EDT – onto cume disk 2…
11:15am EDT – cume disk 2 finished. Moving on to TR11 disk…
11:45am EDT – TR11 done. On to 1 of 9 group PTF disks…
12:19pm EDT – onto disk 2 of 9…
12:30pm EDT – disk 3 of 9
12:40pm EDT – disk 4 of 9
01:20pm EDT – disk 5 of 9
02:19pm EDT – all 9 group PTF disks have been loaded.
02:34pm EDT – machine informed me that the Technology Refresh PTF requires it’s own reboot, and then it will likely be looking to load more PTFs. That may require loading all the DVDs again… we’ll see…
04:06PM EDT – rebooted after TR11 install. As feared, it’s asking for the disks again to install the rest of the PTFs. It’s currently saying that it’s finishing up something from the previous PTF (TR11) install and then it will start chewing on the DVDs again.
04:50pm EDT – starting to move through the 12 DVDs (2 cume, 1 TR, 9 groups).
06:00pm EDT – all DVDs loaded again. Machine is now chewing on the PTFs to be applied at the upcoming reboot.
11:00pm EDT – watching on the system console… still processing PTFs.
03:30am EDT – reboot complete.
07:00am EDT – firewall opened up.

PLEASE NOTE – I TOOK THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SHUT FIREWALL PORTS THAT MAY NO LONGER BE NEEDED. Over the years, various people needed random ports for things. I have left a bunch of these ports closed until someone asks to have them opened again.

I have flagged all PTFs for ‘permanent’ application. This likely means that the next unattended IPL may be longer than usual. This is scheduled for Friday Sept 14, 11:30pm EDT. This reboot is likely to take longer than usual, but hopefully not 9 hours like the first reboot after the install…