Geeky Ramblings

The folks at iSeries Network Magazine ran a profile on me.

The online version can be found here or you can view a PDF of it here.

Well, I’m famous now … this blog was mentioned prominently in the May edition of eServer Magazine: iSeries Edition ENGPGM column (written by Ryan Rhodes) titled “iBlog — iSeries bloggers are popping up around the internet”.

This blog, Mike Wills, and Colin Williams‘ blogs were mentioned. My IMHO blog was mentioned too.

I wonder if it will increase the traffic?

… for eServer Magazine, iSeries Edition!

The topic of the interview wasn’t particularly ground breaking … just about being an iSeries Blogger.

I’ve created a new blog … I’m hoping it will provide a place for iSeries folks to share their thoughts in a more ‘journalistic’ sense.

Not much activity yet … but I have high hopes.

Check it out when you get a chance … http://imho.midrange.com.

Found this on Search400 …

… how to change your FTP server to use a port other than the default port of 21. Ports in the range of 0-1023 are reserved and well-known ports, with port 21 being the established standard for FTP. The reason most people want to do this is to make it harder for someone to gain unauthorized access to your FTP server.

Although this may make it more difficult for someone to discover that you are running an FTP server, this by itself will not prevent someone from being able to discover and potentially hack into your FTP server. If you decide to use this technique, keep in mind that this is no substitute for other types of security and should be viewed as only a very small piece of your security infrastructure. If you have existing FTP programs or scripts, you will need to change them to access your new FTP port.

For anyone who has tried to do this, you may have noticed that the port can’t be changed using the CHGFTPA command. Here is how to make the changes.

1. Enter the command WRKSRVTBLE and scroll down to the services that are labeled ftp-control.
2. Display and print these entries.
3. Use the command ADDSRVTBLE to duplicate these entries exactly as they appear, with the exception that you will specify a new port number. To get lowercase values to stay lowercase, make sure they are enclosed in single quotes. When you specify your new FTP port, you should avoid using the reserved ports of 0-1023. You should also try to avoid using other ports that are already defined.
4. Compare your new entries to the existing entries that are on port 21 to ensure that everything is an exact match.
5. Delete your existing entries for service ftp-control that is on port 21.
6. End and restart TCP/IP.
7. If you wish, entries labeled ftp-data can also be changed in a similar manner.

When you access FTP from the AS/400, you will now have to specify the port. From the AS/400 the FTP command would look like this:

FTP RMTSYS(’10.10.10.10′) PORT(21021)
From the DOS prompt, it would look like this:

C:WINDOWS>ftp
ftp> open 10.10.10.10 21021

ZDNet is running an article titled “IBM overhauls iSeries for the long haul” where it’s discussing how IBM has revamped the iSeries (AS/400 … i5 … name du’jure) for the modern age.

I dunno … I still don’t see a ad’s on the TV touting the iSeries. I think there were some implied iSeries ad’s a few years ago … where the exec was all in tizzy because their server room was empty … except for a single black box (looked like an iSeries) … and a lone tech was walking out the door and said “We consolidated all the servers on the one box” (which is kind-a / sort-a what LPAR allows you to do) … but iSeries was never mentioned … just eServer.

Of course the biggest problem that iSeries faces these days is summed up by this final quote in the article:

You can run a Web server on an iSeries,” Eunice said, “but try to find yourself a Web programmer who has experience in that, or find yourself someone who’s an expert in Microsoft Exchange and also AS/400? Good luck.

Which is, unforunately, quite true.

At work, our ITS support person is going to be transplanting our development system from one set of hardware to another (slightly more powerful).

He sent out an email annoucing that he would be doing a full system backup tonight (always a good idea when doing a major system change). He indicated that he would be running the backup from home.

I responded …

You wimp … back when I was doing upgrades we had to wait hours for the system to prompt us for the next diskette.
Of course, trying to lift a 200mb hard drive would give you a hernia … instead of having to worry having about it getting lost in your pocket change

That got a laugh.

Ok iSeries Bloggers … now WE have a button!

I would suggest you reference it like this:
<a href="http://www.iseries.ibm.com" title="IBM iSeries — For when you can't afford to be out of business"><img src="/images/iseries-button.png" alt="IBM iSeries"/></a>

Feel free to use the button graphic on your site … but, please, copy it to your own server instead of referencing mine

If you do decide to use the image … trackback to this post. Maybe I’ll setup an iSeries blog agregator sometime.

I was working on my current project at work today and ran into an odd problem … a host name (that existed) could not be resolved.

The only different thing about the host name is that it was retrieved from an iSeries using JDBC.

I could ping the host without a problem … so I knew it was valid, but the “InetAddress.getByName()” method couldn’t resolve it.

After a while I noticed that the ending quote for the host name field wasn’t showing up in the variable debug window (of WDSC). So I added a “String.trim()” to the end of the “ResultSet.getString()” and getByName() was able to resolve the name.

I would have thought that getByName() would be able to deal with blanks on the end of a host name.

Jon Paris wrote an article for the online version of iSeries magazine that was based on a thread started in RPG400-L. At the tail end, he noted the 10th anniversery of the creation of midrange.com.

Thanks Jon