Keep up with HP's 6.5 fixes
September 7, 2005
Even if your company plans to migrate its systems off the 3000 platform, you may need repairs from time to time until your 3000 slides out of everyday service. For the homesteading customer, this kind of upkeep on patches to the 3000 is even more crucial, since those sites don't even know an end-date for their systems' service.
Third party support companies — Pivital Solutions, Resource 3000, Beechglen, GSA — can keep track of this kind of activity for you. If you're more of a self-maintainer, there are resources from HP to help you keep up with every little change in MPE/iX status.
MPE/iX 6.5 is a release of particular interest to the community, since it's more widely installed than either the 7.0 or 7.5 releases — and still a version of MPE/iX that HP is patching. (6.0 is out on a lot of systems, but HP's not updating that release anymore). Awhile back we mentioned that HP is PowerPatching 6.5 for the fifth and final time this fall. HP wanted to remind us that doesn't mean 6.5 won't get other patches through the December, 2006 deadline for the end of HP's 3000 support.
HP's Mike Paivinen took time to clarify our blog report of Aug. 24, where we passed along word about the deadline for getting patches out of beta and into the PowerPatch for 6.5:
Although we may be working on the last 6.5 PowerPatch, it does not mean that we are done creating 6.5 patches. We will continue to produce patches on 6.5 for critical fixes, as necessary. We may also choose to create 6.5 patches for other SIB enhancements, if the effort to move a patch back to 6.5 is relatively small and the enhancement would provide value for a customer on 6.5. We simply have no plans to do another 6.5 PowerPatch after this one.
So, beyond the middle of 2006, a customer may need to install 6.5 PowerPatch 5 plus some individual patches to get the complete set of 6.5 patches available at the time. Similarly, your statement that, “Now the patch will be unavailable in seven days for 6.5 beta testing,” is either misleading or incorrect. If either of these patches did not progress from Beta Test to General Release by the deadline for the PowerPatch, which I didn’t bother to look up, it does not mean that the opportunity has been lost. It simply means that they will not be in the PowerPatch. However, they can still become General Release after that point and become available as an individual patch.
You can get updates on patch status changes e-mailed to you from HP. A good FAQ on the process is out on the HP IT Response Center Web site, a place you can access even if you're not an HP support customer:
h30046.www3.hp.com/faq.php?regioncode=NA&langcode=USENG
HP is still pushing patches for 6.5 out to the customer base. We'll have more on the newest entries tomorrow.