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New TAA Tools Refresh!
Our April 15, 2018 refresh (R68) is out and ready to download. This refresh supports IBM i releases 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3, and contains three new tools, and over 20 fixes and enhancements.
The new tools are described below.
Complete documentation for all our tools is on our web site. Always check for tools before starting a new project. We may have something that will lighten your load. Good places to start are our category page or searching our index page.
Call 507-258-5182 or email support@taatool.com to order your refresh. We can either send you a download link or ship it to you on CD.
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Why do we call this a "refresh"?
We do a simultaneous refresh of the tools across all of the underlying supported releases of the IBM i Operating System. To call this a release or version would confuse it with the VRM numbering of the underlying OS, since we refresh the tools far more often. You could consider this our parallel to IBM's Technical Refreshes for IBM i, but our refreshes apply to multiple VRMs of the IBM i OS.
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New Tools
RTVJOBOUTQ
The Retrieve Job Output Queue command provides a way of determining where a job’s output will be sent.
Have you ever printed a file or document and not been able to locate the output? Finding spool files often causes frustration for users. The reason is that many printer files are defined as SPOOL(\*YES) and OUTQ(\*JOB). This means that the spooled file will end up in an output queue determined by your job settings. If your job settings have a special values of \*DEV, \*WRKSTN, or \*SYSVAL for OUTQ or PRTDEV set, the actual output queue the spool file is sent to can be hard to determine.
Our new tool, Retrieve Job Out Queue. RTVJOBOUTQ returns a qualified OUTQ name of where the output will go. When run inside of a job or program, you can use the return variables to inform users of where to find their output.
GENRANPWD2
The Generate Random Password 2 command generates a random password according to the current system password rules found in the system values.
In IBM i 7.2, IBM added a new rule to the QPWDRULES system value: \*ALLCRTCHG. This requires CRTUSRPRF and CHGUSRPRF to abide by the current system password rules. GENRANPWD2 is a random password tool which generates passwords 5 to 75 characters in length which conform to password rules set on the system. It is used in INZPWD3.
INZPWD3
Part of the INZPWD tool, the Initialize Password 3 command uses the new GENRANPWD2 tool to initialize or reset a user profile to a random password 5 to 75 characters in length. The new password will conform to the set system password rules. The reset user profile will be forced to change the password at next signon. Sure to be a favorite of IBM i security admins and help desks.
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Featured Tools - IFS
Time for some Spring Cleaning!
IFS directories on the IBM i are used to store stream files on your system. Customers can store documents, images, audio or video, spool file data, etc., in a way that other platforms can efficiently use them.
IFS directories can hold enormous amounts of data, but just like oversized closets, they can become cluttered and need a good cleaning every so often. TAA Tools have several tools which can help maintain IFS directories to remain clean and organized.
DLTIFS
The Delete IFS (DLTIFS) command allows deletion of one or more IFS objects in a single directory based on selection criteria. You can select on objects based on over 10 attributes, including size, last used date, owner, object type, etc. One always has to be very careful deleting objects though, so to help users proceed with caution, DLTIFS has an ACTION(\*CHECK) parameter which produces a list of objects that would be deleted if the command were run with ACTION(\*DLT) actually set. This check list can be checked for accuracy, then cleanup can proceed.
CVTIFS
With DLTIFS only handling one directory at a time, cleanup could still be cumbersome. This is when combining two or more TAA Tools comes nicely into play. Using the Convert IFS (CVTIFS) command, one could get a list of all IFS Directories, then iterate over them, running each through DLTIFS for a total and complete cleanup of all directories.
With security always in mind, for any TAA IFS command which alters the directories, the user must be authorized to the TAACVTIFS authorization list. This ensures only trusted users can use these commands.
Happy Spring Cleaning of your ‘IFS closets’!
Other Great IFS Tools
DLTIFS and CVTIFS are just two of the over fifty IFS commands available in the TAA Productivity Tools suite.
There are Change, Check, Compare, Copy, Convert, Delete, Display, Rename, Restore, Retrieve, Save, Work With, and a few other stand-alone categories of commands, to handle every aspect of IFS work.
Check IFS Damage (CHKIFSDMG), for example, attempts to save one or more individual IFS objects to a save file. \*DIR, \*FLR, and \*DOC objects are bypassed. Messages are sent for those objects which could not be saved including some objects that are not valid to be saved. While this is not a perfect solution, the messages can be used to indicate damage situations. This discovery technique could come in very handy when needing to validate files or data.
Scan IFS (SCNIFS) is a command which scans one or more stream files for an argument.
If the argument is found anywhere in the stream file, a line is listed identifying the IFS object. When you need to find that certain file that references a name, an amount, or an event, this could prove invaluable, and much faster than running on a mapped drive on your workstation.
Another command, Revoke IFS Authorities (RVKIFSAUT), is useful when users leave a department or the company. Authorities to IFS objects are revoked for the specified user profile. As with other IFS commands, there is a ACTION(\*CHECK) function which produces a list of objects to which authorities would be revoked should the actual RVKIFSAUT command be run.
A favorite here is the pair SAVOBJIFS and RSTOBJIFS which allows for easy transfer of objects between systems by FTP or even email attachment.
TAA Tools can be invaluable for maintaining your IFS directories for efficiency, performance, and security. TAA helps to handle all system administrator and user needs in this area, with more tools always on the horizon.
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IBM's support for IBM i 7.1 ended in April
Refresh 68 is our last refresh targeted at IBM i 7.1. We will continue to provide fixes as needed for the tools on 7.1 until April 15, 2020.
If you are still on 7.1 (or earlier!) you should be making plans to upgrade now. Here at TAA Tools we've partnered with iTech Solutions Group to perform our upgrades. Fill out this quick form if you are interested in getting a quote.
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Tools In This Newsletter
Click on the tool name to get the full documentation.
RTVJOBOUTQ - Retrieve Job Output Queue
GENRANPWD2 - Generate Random Password 2
INZPWD - Initialize Password
DLTIFS - Delete IFS
CVTIFS - Convert IFS
CHKIFSDMG - Check IFS Damage
SCNIFS - Scan IFS
RVKIFSAUT - Revoke IFS Authority
SAVOBJIFS - Save Object to IFS
RSTOBJIFS - Restore Object from IFS
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