Korinne's Ramblings

Migrating IBM i RPMs to use OpenSSL 3

2024-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

Today, we're pushing out updates to various rpms to migrate from OpenSSL 1.1.1 to OpenSSL 3. As you may know, OpenSSL 1.1.1 is no longer supported by the upstream OpenSSL project so we had to rebuild our packages to use OpenSSL 3.0, the current Long Term Support (LTS) release.

Blog Update

2024-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything here, but I've made a few changes.

IBM-provided macOS ODBC Driver Repositories

2023-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

In May of last year, I announced</a> that we had publicly released repositories for the Linux ODBC driver and IBM i Access Client Solutions application package. Today I'm letting you know that we now 1</a> also have a Homebrew</a> repository for the macOS driver as well.

IBM-provided Linux ODBC Driver Repositories

2022-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

Today, we're pushing out something that I've been wanting for a long time. We now have RPM and DEB repositories for Linux available directly from IBM for the IBM i Access Client Solutions application package, which includes the IBM i Access ODBC driver. This also includes the latest version of the IBM i Access ODBC driver, which was released today.

While we have been pushing the IBM i Access ODBC driver as the "One True Way" to access the database from open source for some time, the biggest hindrance has been getting it installed. Previously, it was only available from the byzantine labyrinth that is IBM ESS or from the MRS download site (conventiently bookmarkable to https://ibm.biz/ibmi-odbc-download</a>). Both of these require manual steps to log in, agree to the license, download the zip, then extract the zip and install the package. But Linux distributions have these fancy things called package managers that can point to remote repositories of packages and easily extend the distribution's package list with third-party software. Heck, even Microsoft provides Linux repositories nowadays, so it's high time that IBM does similarly.

With this change, it will be much easier for end users to install the driver on Linux. It also makes it easier for automation to install the driver as well, whether that's Ansible system deployment scripts or Dockerfiles for building ODBC-based Linux container apps. In addition, it makes updating the driver much easier too, since the process uses the same upgrade procedure as the rest of the system packages.

IBM i Open Source Updates January 2022

2022-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Happy new year! I know it's late February now, but it's still the first post of 2022 here, so let's see what January had to offer. 😁

IBM i Open Source Updates December 2021

2022-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

Just because the last couple months were quiet doesn't mean that nothing's going on. Case in point, the last month of 2021 saw a ton of updates, though many of them had been in the works for a long time.

IBM i Open Source Updates November 2021

2022-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

November brings some nice goodies for IBM i 7.3+ users and some security fixes.

IBM i Open Source Updates October 2021

2022-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Another relatively quiet month of IBM i open source updates.

IBM i Open Source Updates September 2021

2022-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

September was a pretty quiet month, but still some good stuff.

IBM i Open Source Updates August 2021

2022-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

August is up, let's check it out.

IBM i Open Source Updates July 2021

2022-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Back with another overdue update, this time for July. Big news this month, which had been hinted at for a while. Did you figure it out ahead of time?

IBM i Open Source Updates June 2021

2022-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Hey, it's been a while! I got way behind on pushing out update blogs, so I'll be pushing out updates to catch up on the 2021 and try to be more consistent for 2022.

IBM-provided Repositories and YUM Updates

2021-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Today, we're pushing out an update to YUM which will automatically pull in a new ibmi-repos package. The ibmi-repos package will provide two "new" repositories:

ibmi-base</li>
ibmi-release</li> </ul>
The new ibmi-base repo will point to the same place that the current ibm repo does, while the ibmi-release repo will point at an IBM i version-specific repo.
This will make it easier for us to push out updates to these repos as things change. Currently, the ibm repo is only shipped with the bootstrap and not owned by any package, so we can't push out any updates to it automatically.
Because we would like to make the transition from the ibm repo to the new repos as seamless and error-free as possible, we're pushing out new repo files instead of trying to update the existing repo in-place and we're making yum depend on this new package. This will ensure that all users will get this update when they run updates and any of their local changes to the existing repo will not get overwritten in the process (if the sysadmin has made any changes).
Once migrated to the new repos, the old ibm.repo file can be removed.
More details and a FAQ is available in our docs</a>

IBM i Open Source Updates April 2021

2021-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Well, I'm a month late, but let's not dawdle any further -- on to the updates!

IBM i Open Source Updates May 2021

2021-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

May updates at the same time as April updates? Madness, I say!

IBM i Open Source Updates March 2021

2021-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Hold on to your hats, because this might be the biggest monthly update yet!

IBM i Open Source Updates February 2021

2021-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

New year, new rpm updates! In this post, we'll go over updates for both January and February.

getjobid, cl, and liblist — Oh, My!

2020-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

With the latest update to BASH, there are 3 new IBM i-specific BASH builtin functions: liblist</code>, cl</code>, and getjobid</code>. These builtins function nearly identically to the liblist</code>, system</code>, and getjobid</code> commands that exist in PASE and/or QSH.
IBM i Open Source Updates December 2020 2020-12-23T00:00:00+00:00 Being the holiday and end of year season here in Rochester, things are wrapping up for the year so I figured I'd put out my December update now instead of next month. Consider it an early Xmas present - just watch out for Santa's bicycle gun! 😉 IBM i Open Source Updates October & November 2020 2020-12-02T00:00:00+00:00 October was a pretty slow month with mostly low-level improvements so I figured I'd combine them with the November updates. November turned out to be a pretty big, so here we go! IBM i Open Source Updates August & September 2020 2020-10-28T00:00:00+00:00 While August had some big hitters, September was very quiet so I decided to only do one update. IBM i Open Source Updates July 2020 2020-10-23T00:00:00+00:00 Been a while so let's get right to it. IBM i Open Source Updates June 2020 2020-07-15T00:00:00+00:00 Well, it's that time of the month again. Time to talk about all the OSS updates that's fit to print! IBM i Open Source Updates May 2020 2020-06-22T00:00:00+00:00 Well, I mentioned before that the May update was gonna be big and boy is it a doozy! IBM i Open Source Updates Apr 2020 2020-05-20T00:00:00+00:00 April seemed very busy to me, but it ended up being rather mild in what we actually delivered. I suspect that means that my May update will be a rather large update. 😉 IBM i Open Source Updates Mar 2020 2020-04-22T00:00:00+00:00 Alright folks, strap in because March was a busy month! IBM i Open Source Updates Feb 2020 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00 Wow, hasn't even been a week! In this blog entry, I'm going to go over what my team delivered in February. IBM i Open Source Updates Jan 2020 2020-04-10T00:00:00+00:00 Well, I hadn't planned to take this long to get out another blog, but the world of OSS moves fast and things have been very busy around here. I'm planning on having more frequent updates than every other month. Let's start with what my team did in January. IBM i Open Source Updates Dec 2019 2020-01-08T00:00:00+00:00 It's a new year and so I'm finally getting around to doing something that I've wanted to do for a while now: write a blog series about various updates about what the IBM i OSS team is doing. I'm not sure the cadence of these updates, but I'll try to keep them updated periodically. For this first one, I'm going to handle it a bit differently as the team has just gotten back from the holiday break so there's not much to share so far for this year, but November and December were very busy, so that's what I'm going to talk about here. Bash Command Oddities 2018-10-02T00:00:00+00:00 Sometimes when using bash, you can run in to an oddity where it keeps running the "wrong" command. Let's explore. Using System Naming in Python ibm_db 2018-09-28T00:00:00+00:00 Like last-week's post about commitment control in Python ibm_db, you may run in to this unexpected error as well: >>> cur.callproc('qcmdexc', ('ADDLIBLE QIWS',)) ('ADDLIBLE QIWS',) >>> cur.execute("select * from qcustcdt") Traceback (most recent call last): File "/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/python3.6/site-packages/ibm_db_dbi.py", line 1254, in _prepare_helper self.stmt_handler = ibm_db.prepare(self.conn_handler, operation) Exception: QCUSTCDT in KADLER type *FILE not found. SQLSTATE=42704 SQLCODE=-204 During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/python3.6/site-packages/ibm_db_dbi.py", line 1394, in execute self._prepare_helper(operation) File "/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/python3.6/site-packages/ibm_db_dbi.py", line 1257, in _prepare_helper raise self.messages[-1] ibm_db_dbi.ProgrammingError: ibm_db_dbi::ProgrammingError: QCUSTCDT in KADLER type *FILE not found. SQLSTATE=42704 SQLCODE=-204 </code></pre> Using Python ibm_db with Un-journaled Tables 2018-09-20T00:00:00+00:00 When using the Python ibm_db package to interact with the Db2 for i database, you may run in to this error: >>> cur.execute('insert into qtemp.foo values(1)') Traceback (most recent call last): File "/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/python3.6/site-packages/ibm_db_dbi.py", line 1311, in _execute_helper return_value = ibm_db.execute(self.stmt_handler) Exception: Statement Execute Failed: FOO in QTEMP not valid for operation. SQLSTATE=55019 SQLCODE=-7008 During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/python3.6/site-packages/ibm_db_dbi.py", line 1396, in execute self._execute_helper(parameters) File "/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/python3.6/site-packages/ibm_db_dbi.py", line 1321, in _execute_helper raise self.messages[-1] ibm_db_dbi.ProgrammingError: ibm_db_dbi::ProgrammingError: Statement Execute Failed: FOO in QTEMP not valid for operation. SQLSTATE=55019 SQLCODE=-7008 </code></pre> Calling QSH utilities from PASE 2018-05-29T10:43:00-05:00 QSH provides a wonderful utility called db2</code> which allows you to run SQL queries from within the QSH shell, but what if you're in a QP2TERM shell or using SSH - what then?Fetching Python Database Cursors by Column Name 2018-01-08T19:29:00-06:00 Today I got asked if you can index in to rows returned by ibm_db_dbi</code> by column name. While this doesn't come out of the box1</a>, it can be done pretty easily. Mucking with the Runtime Library Search Path on PASE 2017-11-17T12:13:14-06:00 In my last blog I showed how the LIBPATH</code> gets used and also how the runtime search path in the binary gets used. LIBPATH</code> is obviously set as an environment variable, but how does that runtime search path get generated? Let's explore! LIBPATH... How Does It Work? 2017-09-08T18:03:20-05:00 So in the last entry, I described the differences between PATH</code> and LIBPATH</code>, but I didn't really explain how LIBPATH</code> is actually used. I'm going to rectify that in this entry. First, though, we need to take a detour and learn how programs get loaded. PATH vs LIBPATH 2017-09-01T15:41:00-05:00 I see this kind of tip suggested a lot when dealing with PASE issues: export PATH=/my/path/bin:/other/path/bin:$PATH export LIBPATH=/my/path/bin:/other/path/bin:$LIBPATH </code></pre> This misguided suggestion bugs me to no end, so today I'm here to educate and clear up confusion over LIBPATH</code>. First Post 2016-12-23T15:23:24-06:00 First post here. More to come later. Happy X-mas to you all!