IFS Enhancements to Navigator for i

Last week, I wrote about latest Navigator for i Enhancements and the PTFs that you need to install to get the latest capabilities. In that blog, I mentioned that the cover letter for PTF SI47573 had some information about other enhancements that have been made. One of the items in that cover letter relates to the IFS and it states the following:

2. Integrated File System
- Capability for a user to download a file or folder from an IBM i system to a local PC or upload a file from a local PC to a folder on an IBM i system.
- A simple text editor has been added for editing text files in the integrated file system.

Below you will find some additional information about these IFS enhancements:

Download

This feature allows you to download a file or multiple files/folders as a zip file from an IBM i partition to your local PC. Expand IBM i Management -> File Systems -> Integrated File System in IBM Navigator for i. Navigate through the file system folders until you locate the folder that contains the file or folder you want to download and click on it, then right-click the files or folders from in the console work space and select Download, which brings up the Download panel. When you select multiple files or folder, a compression is mandatory. You can specify the archive name and archive format before downloading starts. When you start the download, you will be using your browser download settings to determine where the downloaded file will be stored.

Upload

This feature allows you to upload up to five files from your PC to an IBM i partition. Expand IBM i Management -> File Systems -> Integrated File System in IBM Navigator for i, navigate through the file system folders until you locate the folder you wish to upload to, then right-click the folder in the console work space and select Upload, which brings up the Upload panel. You can select files to upload by clicking Browse button or clear the selection by clicking Clear button. After your file selection is finished, you start the upload by clicking Upload button and of course can cancel the upload process by clicking Cancel button at any time.

Edit

This feature allows you to edit text files in the Integrated File System. Expand IBM i Management -> File Systems -> Integrated File System in IBM Navigator for i, navigate through the file system folders until you locate the folder that contains the file you want to edit and click on it, then right-click the text file in the console work space and select Edit, which brings up the Edit panel. On the Edit panel, you are allowed to type in or modify text; click Save to save the content or Save As to save the contents to a new file.

The Integrated File System properties page (found when you click on Integrated File System from the left-hand navigation pane; the Actions drop-down has a properties option) allows for configuration of which files will have the edit action enabled. You can select to enable the edit action for all files or files with specific extensions.

I would like to thank Shengjun Wang (王胜军) for supplying me the information for this blog. Shengjun Wang (王胜军) works in the IBM China Systems and Technology Lab in Beijing on the IBM i Navigator development team.

 

 

 

 

Display Locks With Director Navigator

A few weeks ago I wrote about how you can Display File Usage Information to view information about what jobs are using a file within the Integrated File System. You can also view lock information from the GUI, and that too has existed since V5R1 and V5R2. For object locks, most everyone is aware of the Work with Object Locks (WRKOBJLCK) command. This blog will review how you can view object lock information from the GUI. You'll discover there are a few more capabilities through the GUI than there are via the command interface.

There is a lot of functionality built into the GUI for displaying object locks as well as database member and record locks. This blog is only going to review the object lock information.

First of all, start by reviewing the locks held by a job. This is similar to working with a job (WRKJOB), option 12, Work with locks.

Once you navigate to the job you are interested in, and take the pop-up box to go to Details then Locked Objects. 

 

You will then be shown a list of the object locks held by the job.

 

For any given object that is locked, you can then display either the Lock Holders or Properties.

 

Lock Holders will show you other jobs that are holding locks on that object; this is similar to what WRKOBJLCK will show you.

Properties provide additional information beyond what you can find on the command interface. Specifically, on the General tab, you will see additional information about the object lock that is held. A simple example is with the job's lock on the user profile object. On the green-screen interface, you will see the user profile object listed three times in the job's lock list. On the GUI, you will only see the user profile listed once, but the lock detail information will show you that the object has a total of three locks on it. Note that the information on the General tab can be included in the Locked Objects table view by customizing the Columns...

 

The Details tab contains information regarding the procedure, module, program, statements and instruction number where the lock was obtained. The information displayed here will depend upon the actual program that obtained the lock, but this information can be invaluable for debugging locking problems.

 

You can get additional locking information when you take the Include... option from the work management Locked Objects action drop-down. The Include... options allow you to display additional lock information that is not shown by default; the operating system has internal locking mechanisms – locks on internal system objects as well as space location locks – you can toggle these options on to display additional locking information which can be useful for diagnostic purposes.

 

You can also do these functions through programmatic interfaces. There are many APIs that provide lock information:

• List Object Locks (QWCLOBJL)
• Retrieve Job Locks (QWCRJBLK)
• Retrieve Lock Information (QWCRLCKI)
• Retrieve Lock Request Information (QWCRLRQI)
• Retrieve Lock Space Attributes (QTRXRLSA)
• Retrieve Lock Space Locks (QTRXRLSL)
• Retrieve Lock Space Records (QTRXRLRL)
• Retrieve Thread Attribute (QWTRTVTA)

 

 

 

 

Display File Usage Information

Did you know that you can display file usage information for files stored in the Integrated File System? And that this usage information includes the details about jobs that are using a file? Or that you can display file system objects for a job? This has been part of the operating system for many releases (it was introduced in 5.2!), but I think it is a very little-known and seldom-used capability.

I'll use a simple example to demonstrate...

I have a stream file in the root directory named DAWNMAY and I have opened this file in edit mode in a telnet session.

Using IBM Systems Director Navigator (this capability also exists in System i Navigator), begin by opening File Systems and then opening up the Integrated File System. Navigate to the file of interest – in my case I just had to open up the Root directory to find the file. Take the Properties option.

 

 

Open the Use tab where you will find a section on Current usage. Clicking on the Show usage button will allow you to access more detailed information.

 

 

Now you can see that there is one job using that file.

 

 

Select the option that makes the Details.... button available.

 

 

And now you get the details of the job with that particular file in use:

 

 

There is a second way to approach this – and that's by starting with the job that is using the file. For example, you can open Work Management and navigate to the job of interest in whatever manner you choose (Active Jobs, Server Jobs, or whatever navigation you like). Once you have found the job you are interested in, right click on it to get to the options – take Details, Open Files, and then File System Objects.

 

 

The results list the file system objects that are in use by that job.

 

 

There are two underlying APIs that can be used to collect similar information programmatically:

• Retrieve Object References (QPOLROR)
• Retrieve Referenced Objects (QPOLRRO)