DB2 command

LIST DATABASE DIRECTORY Command
Lists the contents of the system database directory. If a path is specified, the contents of the local database directory are listed.

Scope
If this command is issued without the ON path parameter, the system database directory is returned. This information is the same at all database partitions.

If the ON path parameter is specified, the local database directory on that path is returned. This information is not the same at all database partitions.

Authorization
None

Required connection
None. Directory operations affect the local directory only.

Command syntax
>>-LIST--+-DATABASE-+--DIRECTORY--+---------------+------------><
'-DB-------' '-ON--+-path--+-'
'-drive-'

the atheist and the bear story (loyalty, conviction, payback and reward, changing sides)

A committed atheist (that's someone who steadfastly does not believe in a god of any sort) was on a trekking holiday when he became lost in some dense woods.

A large angry bear, with ten starving cubs back home and claws like kitchen knives, suddenly emerged from the undergrowth.

The athiest screamed in terror, turned and ran. The bear was quicker however, and after a long and desperate chase eventually cornered the atheist in a gully.

The exhausted atheist sank to his knees, shaking.

The bear, seeing that its prey was trapped, moved slowly towards the petrified man, drooling. The bear was drooling too.

The atheist lifted his head, with tears in his eyes, and uttered the words he thought he would never say in all his life: "God help me..."

With these simple three words, a blinding flash of lightning lit up the sky. There was a deafening crash of thunder. The clouds parted. A brilliant light shone down. The forest fell silent. The bear froze still, in a trance. The atheist stood gaping, transfixed.

A voice came loud from above. Louder than twenty AC/DC concerts all happening at the same time. We can safely assume this voice to have been the voice of a god of some sort.

"You atheists make me seriously mad," boomed the god, "You deny me all your life. You tell others to deny me too. You put your faith in all that bloody Darwinian airy-fairy scientific nonsense, and then what a surprise - you get lost because you can't read your stupid map, and now you're about to get eaten by an angry bear all of a sudden you're on your knees snivveling and begging for my help?......... You must be joking..."

The atheist looked down, realising that he was not arguing from a position of strength.

"Okay, I take your point," said the atheist, thinking on his feet, while he still had them, "I can see it's a bit late for me to convert, but what about the bear?... Maybe you could convert the bear instead?"

"Hmmn... interesting idea..." said the god, thinking hard, "...Okay. It shall be done." At which the brilliant light dimmed and vanished; the clouds closed; and the noises of the forest resumed.

The bear awoke and shook its head, a completely different expression on its face. Calm, at peace.

The bear closed its eyes, bowed its head, and said, "For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful, Amen.."

THE END

the jewels story (enjoyment, fulfillment, possession, wealth, materialism, greed)

Once there was a very rich and greedy man. He loved and hoarded jewels.

One day a visitor asked to see them.

So the jewels were brought out, amid much expensive security, and the two men gazed at the wonderful stones.

As the visitor was leaving he said, "Thank you for sharing your jewels with me."

"I didn't give them to you," exclaimed the rich man, "They belong to me."

"Yes of course," replied the visitor, "And while we enjoyed the jewels just the same, the real difference between us is your trouble and expense of buying and protecting them."

System Firmware on pSeries and System p

Most PowerPC-based systems since POWER4 (including blades (JS20 and later)) have dual firmware banks. The intent is to allow an administrator to update the system’s firmware in one bank while preserving the previous firmware image in the other bank. Should there be a problem with the firmware update process, or an issue with the new image for any reason, the administrator can revert to the older, known-safe image.

During normal operation, the system is booted off of the “temporary” bank (sometimes called the temp side or t-side), and the contents of the temporary side are the same as that of the “permanent” bank (a.k.a. the perm side or p-side).

When a firmware update occurs, the new image is copied into the t-side. If the t-side image is different than the p-side image, the t-side will be copied to the p-side before the t-side is overwritten (i.e. the current production image will be backed up to the permanent bank). The system will attempt to reboot to the new image on the t-side. If the boot succeeds, and the new image works well, it can be “committed” to the p-side. If the system does not boot on the t-side (due to a corrupted image, for example), it will automatically boot onto the p-side. At that point, the t-side image can be “rejected” by overwriting it with the known-safe p-side image. The system should then be booted off of the t-side

Given those properties, it has always seemed to me that the sides are misnamed; I find it useful to think of the temporary side as the production side, and the permanent side as the backup side.

temporary == production
permanent == backup (older, known-safe image)

Viewing the Current Firmware Levels

The current firmware levels can be viewed by running /usr/sbin/lsmcode -A (lsmcode is part of the lsvpd open source package):

# lsmcode -A
sys0!system:SF240_320 (t) SF220_051 (p) SF240_320 (t)service:

The above output indicates that the temporary bank contains the firmware level SF240_320, and the permanent bank contains SF220_051. The third entry by the sys0!system: tag indicates that the system is currently booted off of the temporary side. Before a new firmware update operation can be attempted, the t-side image should be committed, overwriting the older p-side image.

I wrote about the serv_config command-line utility in my previous post; this command is the easiest method to determine whether your system is currently operating off of the temporary or permanent side. Run /usr/sbin/serv_config -e sp-current-flash-image. If it prints 0, the p-side is booted; if it prints 1, the t-side is booted. Both the lsmcode and serv_config commands will work on any Linux partition on the system.

Managing System Firmware

The update_flash command (part of the powerpc-utils-papr open source package) provides the ability to manage system firmware from the Linux command-line on POWER systems. There are restrictions as to which partitions can be used to update system firmware:

If the system is managed by an HMC, firmware should be updated from there (via the Licensed Internal Code management screens). In some cases, firmware updates performed via the HMC will be concurrent (meaning that the system and the partitions do not need to be restarted in order to recognize and begin using the updated firmware level).
If the system is partitioned, only the partition that has been granted service authority can perform firmware updates.
If the system is not partitioned, and not HMC managed, the update_flash command is the only method for updating system firmware.
New firmware images can be downloaded from http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/mdownload/. The following operations can be performed with the update_flash command:

Validate that the image stored in a file appears to be uncorrupted: update_flash -v -f
Perform an update with the image stored in a file: update_flash -f
Commit the t-side to the p-side (when it has been determined that the production image is safe): update_flash -c
Reject the current image on the t-side (overwrite it with the image in the p-side, because the t-side image is unsafe): update_flash -r
The first three commands should only be used when the system is booted on the t-side; the last can only be used when the system is booted on the p-side.