Take the guesswork out of the PTF history

When things go wrong on an iSeries or AS/400, one thing you might check is what PTFs were installed recently. Unless you keep a written log of all items installed on your machine (yeah, right) or have a REALLY good memory, it's hard to determine exactly when a PTF was installed over the last month or two.

As was presented elsewhere, you can get more out of the DSPPTF command by directing the output to an *OUTFILE instead of the screen or a print queue:

DSPPTF OUTPUT(*OUTFILE) OUTFILE(QTEMP/PTFINFO)

Then start interactive SQL and run the following query:

 
select scstdate, scsttime, scppid, scptfid,
       sclib, scxpfid, scstatus, scsptf
from   ptfinfo 
where  substr(scstdate, 7, 2) = '02'
order  by scstdate desc, scsttime desc 

The resulting display will be all PTF activity in the year '02' in descending order by date and time.

If you want to see a history of your cumulative PTF installs, run this query:

 select scstdate, scsttime, scppid, scptfid,
       sclib, scxpfid, scstatus, scsptf
from   ptfinfo 
where  substr(scstdate, 7, 2) = '02' 
       and scptfid like 'TC%' 
order  by scstdate desc, scsttime desc 

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