Expect repair code in the future
September 6, 2005
Patches are a complex subject for HP 3000 customers. Some avoid this code that repairs system problems, saying no changes will ensure stability. Others say only three things can happen when you apply a patch, and two are bad. But if you have a problem — like the LargeFile datasets that can corrupt IMAGE databases — or need features, like better control over FTP, patches can be essential as electricity.
HP says it intends to make MPE/iX 6.5-7.0-7.5 patches available after 2006, even though it will be out of the 3000 business by then. HP's Mike Paivinen reported on the OpenMPE mailing list:
It’s possible that *all* of the MPE/iX patches on ITRC may be available after end-of-support, but we’ve only made commitments to maintain the 6.5, 7.0, and 7.5 patches. So, if you’re on a release older than 6.5, don’t count on them staying there.
As for the date when they’d be removed from ITRC, we haven’t set one. I thought that was good news. I expect that sufficient notice will be given to the e3000 community before those patches are taken off of ITRC, whenever that occurs in the future.
If you're not on those releases yet, and concerned over the status of HP's patches for an MPE/iX version you might use in the future, you could do what Allegro's Gavin Scott suggested: just download the code now. It's not a lot of bits, just crucial ones.
Scott, whose company is part of the Resource 3000 support alliance, suggested making a CD of your own MPE support tools:
Honestly if the future availability of these legacy patches is a concern for your systems, just go download them all now and burn them to a CD or something.
This is not some vast database of a thousand patches for each release; there are only about 100 available for each one, of which probably most are superceded by others in the list so if you only want the latest patches then there probably are less than half that number.
If you go to the patch download page there’s a “search by” drop down (or something like that) which you can set to Browse Patches, pick the OS version of your choice, and then in the number to be displayed select “all” and hit search. There you are. A list of all available patches for that release.