HP OpenVMS Systems

As a result of the HP - Compaq merger the various patch distribution processes used in the two companies were evaluated with the goal to move to a single, unified solution. That evaluation showed that the existing HP patch distribution process (IT Resource Center or ITRC) included many useful features lacking in the Compaq OpenVMS patch distribution process and could be modified to provide additional features that OpenVMS users required. Based on that, the decision was made to migrate the OpenVMS patch distribution process to the ITRC.

The URL for the new ITRC site is http://www.itrc.hp.com. Users should update their bookmarks to point to this web site for patch retrieval of OpenVMS patches. Users are encouraged to begin familiarizing themselves with the HP ITRC patch web site before the existing patch server is shutdown, to minimize any disruption to online patch retrieval.

Yes, FTP access is NOT going away when the old site is discontinued. You can still access kits via anonymous FTP on the ITRC site by connecting to ftp.itrc.hp.com or to ftp://ftp.itrc.hp.com from your browser. ITRC registration is not required to use FTP access. Internal users behind the HP firewall may need to set PASSIVE mode ON when using FTP to access the ITRC FTP directories.

No, there are two ways to access the ITRC via your OpenVMS system. You can use FTP (ftp://ftp.itrc.hp.com) or you can use the Mozilla browser.

You can download any of the browsers for OpenVMS at:

» http://h71000.www7.hp.com/ebusiness/technology.html

Browsers are also available at:

» http://www.mozilla.org/

Registering for an HP ITRC login is required to find and retrieve patches via the HP ITRC web interface. This ensures that we can contact anyone who may have downloaded a patch for which a serious problem is later discovered. Registration is unrestricted and open to all users.

The Americas ITRC site assigns and expects user IDs that start with "CA", the European site assigns and expects user IDs that start with "BR". The two ITRC logins are not transferable between the Americas and European sites. Customers who want to access both sites need to register at each site and receive the unique CA and BR login IDs.

When you register for the ITRC you will see an option to link Support Contracts with your HP ITRC login. This does NOT work for pre-merger Compaq contract numbers. The way this is being handled is that as Compaq contracts expire and are re-issued with HP contracts, those new contract numbers will be accepted by ITRC registration. You can access all patch content and most other HP ITRC services without a linked support contract. Support Contracts are only necessary for a few HP ITRC services related to some pre-merger HP products only.

The ITRC FTP site has general version directories such as V7.3x and V7.2x. This structure matches that used for other HP operating systems. However, it does not accommodate OpenVMS users' needs. This structure is changing and these directories will be replaced by specific OpenVMS V7.3-1, V7.3, V7.2-1H1 etc. directories. The Alpha V6.2x directory will not be changed since the kits in this directory apply to all V6.2 variants. These changes will occur before the old server is shutdown. Note that the advanced patch searching features - patch dependency relationships and multiple patch downloads - are not available from the HP ITRC FTP site.

When you access the new site via FTP you will not see the UPDATE kits in the various version directories. Instead, the UPDATE kits are located in the patch_bundles/openvms directory structure. This is changing and the UPDATE kits will be moved to the specific OpenVMS version directories, e.g., V7.3-1, V7.3. This change is scheduled to be done in the October timeframe.

To search by date you can use wildcard characters with the "Search by Keyword" option. Use a question mark (?) to match any single character, and an asterisk (*) to match multiple characters. Using wildcards, it is possible to search for all patches posted within a given month by including a date string in the keyword field. Since the patch post date is always recorded in yyyymmdd format, entering "200308*" in the keyword field will return all patches posted in August 2003.

Currently there is no reliable way to search by rating. New patches issued have INSTALL_1, INSTALL_2, INSTALL_3 keywords in the documentation but older patches do not have those keywords. We will soon be adding those keywords to the patch documents for all the patches listed. When that happens, you will be able to search using those rating as keywords in the keyword field. Keywords can also be combined using the Boolean search criteria for more advanced searches. For example, entering "INSTALL_1 AND (200308* OR 200309*)" will return all patches posted during the past 2 months with an install rating of 1.

In a future release of the ITRC GUI, the post date of each patch will be displayed in the notes area for each patch, and the search results will be sorted by Installation rating and post date from newest to oldest. These changes are expected in the January ITRC release.

The "Search by Patch IDs" option was designed to quickly search for specific patches when the patch IDs are already known. Wildcard characters ("*", "?") are not recognized with the "Search by Patch IDs" option, and are interpreted literally. More than one patch ID can be entered in the "Search by Patch IDs" field (separated by spaces or commas) to search for more than one patch at a time. Although it is possible to only enter a portion of a patch ID in the "Search by Patch IDs" field (e.g. LINKER), only the first matching patch will be returned for each "word" entered. Since the corresponding patch ID is included in each patch document, you can workaround this by using the "Search by Keyword" option to find all patches by product or facility. The ability to return multiple search results when searching by patch ID is under investigation, and may be included in a future ITRC release.

When you browse or do a keyword search for patches, the search results list two patch ID columns - "Recommended" and "Most Recent". If you do a search by Patch ID, three columns are returned - "Recommended", "Most Recent" and ""Specified". These columns have meaning for other HP operating systems but are not relevant to the way OpenVMS distributes patches. The ITRC GUI is being updated to reflect the needs of OpenVMS patch searches. In the future, a search for OpenVMS patches by keyword or browsing patches will return only the "Most Recent" column of results. A search by Patch ID will return the "Specified" and Most Recent" columns. The Patch ID search will return two columns because users may enter superseded patch IDs. Note that only the "Most Recent" patch will be able to be downloaded. These changes are expected in the January ITRC release.

The ITRC site will have two sides. An "active" side that contains patches for supported versions of OpenVMS and an "archive" side that will contain patches for older versions of OpenVMS. The Active part of the site is currently up. The Archive side of the site is not yet available. It will be available before the October shutdown of the old site and will have a directory structure similar to the old FTP site. Note that the advanced patch searching features, patch dependency relationships and multiple patch downloads are not available from the HP ITRC FTP site.

The old patch download site allowed multiple binary files to be listed for one kit, e.g. multiple VMSINSTAL savesets. The ITRC site only allows one binary file per kit. This meant that any kit with multiple binaries had to be repackaged into a single binary file. In addition, because of differences in the naming convention used for OpenVMS kit documents and the requirements on the ITRC site, the text file for each kit that was moved to the active side of the ITRC site had to be re-processed. It was decided to not expend valuable resources to do this work for older, unsupported versions of the operating system.

You only need to select a download format if you have multiple kits in your shopping cart and want to download them with one operation. The kits need to be repackaged into one downloadable file, so, under the heading "download items in one operation", you are asked to select the format desired. For OpenVMS kits, the format selected should be ZIP. Note that if you download multiple kits in a package, you will need to expand that package on your system to get the individual kits. Since kits on the ITRC site are stored as self-extracting executables (as they were on the old site), you will then need to expand each of those self-extracting files to arrive at the final installable kit file.

If you are downloading a single kit there is no need to select a format. You can simply elect an HTTP or FTP download under the section heading "download items individually".

OpenVMS patches have two types of dependencies, required dependencies which are kits that must be installed first, before the target kit gets installed, and optional dependencies, kits that should be installed with the target kit but are at the discretion of the user. For new kits being issued, both types of dependencies will be listed at the top of the kit document, in a kit information header, as well as the usual spots in the body of the document. When you select a kit for download, if it has required dependencies, those kits will also be added to your "shopping cart". The user has the option to remove them from the cart (e.g. if the dependent kits have already been downloaded). Optional dependencies will not automatically be added to the shopping cart. The user will have to select them.

The .TXT files are included in the self-extracting binary file. Once the kit is expanded, the document (called the Release Notes) can be extracted from the binary file or will be placed in the system help directory during kit installation. FTP can also be used to download the .TXT file from the FTP directories.

Digests are the way you get notified of new kits. You need to register for them but registration is open and does NOT require a contact number. Digests are issued weekly. There is a known problem with the digests in that they pick up all or almost all the ECO's that are released rather than just the ECO's released since the last digest was issued. The problem is fixed but unfortunately the fix can not be implemented until there is a new release of the ITRC GUI. That will happen in October. When it does, you should not see more than 5 to 8 ECOs in a OpenVMS digest, probably a lot less most of the time. If no ECO's have been released for the week, no digest will be issued.

Earlier versions are not fully supported and will not have any future, generally available kits issued against them.

If there is a critical patch that customers need to know about immediately, a Customer Advisory is issued that details the problem and what the corrective action is - usually a pointer to the applicable kit. The Customer Advisories go out through a completely different process than the ITRC and have no time restrictions. They will go to customers as soon as they are released.

The OpenVMS kitting process never issued checksums. Those were added as a post processing step by the process that loaded the kits onto the distribution site, once the kits were released by OpenVMS. To make up for the loss of that function when the old process does go away, OpenVMS kits now include the checksum in the documentation. The .TXT files for new kits now have a header at the top that lists critical information like installation rating, reboot requirement, kit size, and the checksum value. This has already been implemented.

We are looking at how to get the checksums moved over for the older kits but that may not be possible. At most, efforts will be concentrated on getting checksums added to the documentation for the most recent OpenVMS versions.

The ITRC patch site is a pre-merger application. As part of the work to update this site to handle OpenVMS needs, all online help documentation is being reviewed to identify updates necessary to make the documentation be more inclusive of OpenVMS. Although OpenVMS is not specifically mentioned in the ITRC documentation pertaining to patches, the patch information is still applicable to OpenVMS

Select the "contact hp" link in the upper left corner of any HP ITRC web page and select "ask a question about using the IT resource center" link under the "e-mail hp" heading on the following page.