IBM AS400 questions

[Paul Berger]

Devin,

The backup command is 'savsys'.  The commands on on AS/400 are usually 
three letter abbreviations for in the command mashed together savsys = 
'save system'  or 'work with user profiles' is 'WRKUSRPRF'  and the 
shutdown command 'Power Down System' is 'PWRDWNSYS'.  If you type in the 
command and press PF4 it will open a menu where you can fill in the 
options for the command, once you get used to the commands you can type 
the commands with options right on the command line  for instance the 
command to shutdown and power off is 'pwrdwnsys *immed restart(*no)' 
this is permanently burned into my brain from back in the days when 
AS/400 was still in development and the OS was running on S/38, but was 
a bit shaky and prompting commands would crash the system so we learned 
the commands with options.

Since this is a 170 it probably has a QIC or 8mm tape under the covers 
and the resource name for it is likely 'TAP01' savsys will by default 
create a bootable tape that can be used to restore the OS.  You may want 
to test booting from the tape you created by changing the IPL tpye on 
the operator panel from the usual "B" to "D".  The D mode IPL specifies 
booting from an alternate IPL device which is normall tape or CDROM.  
You may not be aware that you cannot just throw in any SCSI disk, the 
disks have to be the specific disks that are blessed for use in an AS/400.

A quick google came up with a site 
http://www.ibmfiles.com/pages/as400e.htm that seems to have some of the 
170 manuals linked.

Paul.


On 2017-04-09 1:21 PM, devin davison via cctalk wrote:
> Alright, it was quite a while back that I picked up my ibm AS400 model 170.
> I had asked some questions on the list, it was locked with a password and i
> could not get into the machine. I finally got around to getting into the
> machine and am at the main menu. Before i do anything, I want to back up
> the machine. I have a couple of tapes.
>
> I am not familiar with os/400 at all, the intention is to backup the
> machine so in the event of a hardware failure I will be able to reinstall
> and still have a licenced install.
>
> I come from the sgi land, usually from the prom there is the HINV command
> to give a nice hardware inventory of the machine, is there a similar
> command in the ibm world? I want to find what options are installed, cpu
> and memory details, etc.
>
> Any advice on what to do from here is much appreciated. I just want to get
> the thing backed up and rest assured that if the drives fail i can
> reinstall the os and it have its license.
>
> --Devin