RE: 170 - Power it off or keep it powered on?

["Pete Massiello" <pmassiello-ml@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wasn't arguing about the grace period, I was agreeing on that, and that is
why I thought people were mixing up grace period for how long a machine
could be off for.

So, now you evoked my curiosity.  I went into the computer room and
connected a 170 to power and just powered it up. This AS/400 (yes, it is an
AS/400) with V5R2 on it that hadn't been on (unplugged since we turned it
off) since Dec 06, 2006. So, that would be 13 months it was powered off and
Un-Plugged. This machine hasn't been on since 2006, I went and looked up in
the history log.  It came up fine, didn't ask for a password, didn't ask for
anything.  I had to connect a console (Twinax) to it, but its up and
running, and those noisy old disks are just chattering about.

Pete Massiello

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Keith Carpenter
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 12:02 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: 170 - Power it off or keep it powered on?

Pete Massiello wrote:
> Are we not mixing apples and oranges?  
>
> You have 70 days to enter a system password once it tells you that a you
> need another one.  But, I have machines we don't power up but once a year,
> and they never ask for a password (V4R5 and V5R1, and maybe one is at V5R2
> as well).  Now, I can see that the cache battery may be another issue if
you
> don't power it up for a while, and that could run out.  Hopefully the
> machine came down smoothly and everything was written from the controllers
> cache to disk.
>
> For the sake of being "green", I wouldn't keep a machine up that isn't
being
> used.  I would power it off when not in use.  The suggestion about putting
> it on a power schedule was a good idea as well.  
>
> Perhaps just too many upgrades this weekend is making my mind soft.
>
> Pete


The grace period is well defined. The you get a reminder of exactly how 
many days you have left to enter the password.  I've seen 70 days for 
this one.

What triggers system password expiration is less clear. Besides hardware 
changes (eg CPUs, load source DASD, etc.) or control panel cache battery 
failures, it apparently can also be X continuous days of the system 
being powered down.

That your systems have not triggered expiration goes to the question 
about what is going on here.


Keith