AIX: Year 2000 and Beyond

Contents

About This Document

This document describes the Year 2000 problem and provides information about IBM resources available for assessing the readiness of your hardware and software.

For complete information about all IBM products and services in relation to the Year 2000 issue, access the IBM Year 2000 Web site at the following url:

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/year2000/

This site contains information about classes, an IBM Product Readiness Database, and the latest news and information from IBM on this topic.

Description of the Year 2000 Problem

Following are generic symptoms of a date related problem:

• Incorrect sort order
• Missing data, such as data before a specific date is missing or a query may not return complete results even though the data may exist.
• Inability to access data
• A problem occurs at the first time the function is exercised AFTER a leap day or other significant date occurrence
• Date fields are wrong or garbled

IBM Year 2000 Planning and Implementation Guide

IBM has made available, in a variety of ways, a comprehensive Year 2000 resource guide, "The Year 2000 and 2-Digit Dates: A Guide for Planning and Implementation". It is available from your IBM representative and on the Internet at the following url:

http://www.software.ibm.com/year2000/resource.html

This document provides details regarding the nature of the Year 2000 challenge, suggestions on how to get started, technical discussions of alternative methods to correct date fields and listings of Year 2000 ready products and tools available from IBM and other vendors. Also included in the guide is a bibliography of other Year 2000 publications available throughout the industry.

AIX Informational Workbook

IBM offers complete information about the AIX operating system's Year 2000 readiness in the document, "RS/6000 Systems and the Year 2000 Issue".

This document is available on the Internet at the following url:

http://www.software.ibm.com/year2000/papers/aixy2k.html

Refer to the online document for the latest information. The document deals directly with the issues as they relate to AIX, UNIX, and RS6000 related hardware. It covers

• How UNIX-based Operating Systems are affected by the Year 2000 Problem.
• Readiness information for all releases of AIX.
• Readiness information for RS/6000 hardware.
• Patches available for earlier releases of AIX.
• Test Planning guide for software.

The intent is to provide a software developer, administrator or end-user with the information required to make informed choices when dealing with Year 2000 and related issues. It cannot provide specific solutions for all problems that may be encountered in this area, but should lead you to further sources of information, in the event that this document is not enough.

fixcheck - A New AIX Tool

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/tools/y2k/

Some browsers require that you use a special option (such as File -> Save As or Shift-mouseclick) to save the file as a binary object.

The AIX tool is a binary executable and does not require root permission to run. However, it may require that you set execute permission for the file so that any user can run the tool.

Latest AIX Year 2000 Fixes

To download cumulative Year 2000 fixes, access the following url and select "AIX Y2K Software Fixes":

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/support/rs6000.support/downloads

Additional IBM Year 2000 Resources

• IBM Year 2000 Technical Support Center:
  

  http://www.software.ibm.com/year2000

• Testing Primer - Preparing for Year 2000 testing:
  

  http://www.ibm.com/IBM/year2000/testing/tips.html

• AIX operating system Year 2000 status summary:
  

  http://www.rs6000.ibm.com/solutions/y2k/

• IBM Year 2000 Product Readiness Database:
  

  http://wwwyr2k.raleigh.ibm.com/