AS400 iSeries Client Access multiple versions - odbc

We are running an AS400 v5r2 and I have iSeries Client access installed. Since v5r2 does not support a x64 ODBC driver does anyone know how I can either install two versions (v5r4 supports x64) of iSeries Client Access on the same box or just install the x64 odbc driver from the more recent version without uninstalling all of v5r2 components.

Installing two versions of Client Access is probably not going to work, since both register their ODBC drivers with the same name, so only one would be available at a given time.
OTOH the PC side of V5R4 Client Access would probably work without problem with a V5R2 OS/400; perhaps even 6.1 iSeries Access, too. So you can upgrade the x64 box and check whether everything is working. FYI, I had problems with the first versions of 6.1 iSeries Access when running on x64 boxes, later versions were a bit better; also, I do not remember that V5R4 Client Access had a 64-bit variant at all.
Do not forget that on a x64 PC, there are two different ODBC drivers, one for 32-bit applications (stored on C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\cwbodbc.dll and that you can manage with the 32-bit administradorC:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe), and another one for 64-bit applications (stored on C:\WINDOWS\System32\cwbodbc.dll and that you can manage with the 64-bit administrador C:\WINDOWS\System32\odbcad32.exe.) Unless your application is recompiled for 64-bit, what you are interested in is the former one, and if V5R2 Client Access runs flawlessly on that PC, everything is fine. Some applications like Office 2010 come in two flavours, but precisely for compatibility reasons like ODBC, it is still recommended to run the 32-bit variant even on 64-bit workstations.

1) V5R2 is very dead. You aren't going to get a lot of help when it comes to supporting an OS this old.
2) V5R4 is also dead.
3) Generally speaking, IBM intends that Client Access will work for operating systems two levels back and two levels ahead, so you could try using a V5R4 ODBC driver against a V5R2 DB2. The issue is going to be getting a V5R4 version of Client Access.
4) If you have questions about admin issues like this, Server Fault is probably the better choice.
EDIT: Add details of Client Access installation
Client Access has two logical pieces, a server side component and a client side component. Both pieces are available in the IFS, in the QIBM directory tree. If you have an already-working setup of Client Access on the server side, you can install the client side one of two ways:
1) Map a network drive to the IFS and run setup from there. This obviously won't be helpful to you because the V5R2 software doesn't support x64. If you are still under software maintenance, you could order a newer version of Client Access and install it on the server, and then use the newer version to install the needed ODBC driver.
2) Use the IBM-supplied CD to install the client component directly on the client. This allows you to install a different client version than the one on the server. Not generally recommended but in the case where you're migrating away from an unsupported machine, it's probably not a big worry. If your company ordered V5R4 at any time, you have the Client Access CDs.
The key thing for you is that you don't need to install the full Access product if all you need is the ODBC driver.
The biggest problem facing you is the age of the software. IBM stopped supporting V5R4 in Sep 2013. You aren't going to be able to place an order for it with IBM. You might be able to order V6R1 but the ODBC driver may not work with V5R2 - you'd have to try it. See the IBM i Access web site for details, but it's not downloadable.
If you can use OLEDB, try IBM's FTP site.

Related

Azure Data Factory - Self-Hosted Integration Runtime - ODBC driver mystery

We are using a Self-Hosted Integration Runtime for Azure Data Factory.
On that machine there was installed an Exasol ODBC driver of version 6. We wanted to upgrade the driver, deleted an old one and installed a new driver of version 7.
Weird thing is that now in Exasol logs we can see that Data Factory is sometimes connecting via driver version 7, and sometimes via driver version 6.
I made an experiment and deleted Exasol ODBC driver from the machine completely. After that Data Factory still was able to connect to Exasol using the driver I just deleted.
Looks like drivers' DLLs are cached somewhere. What can it be?
Update 1
I captured following actions in Process Monitor when Data Fatory connected to Exasol with ODBC driver of version 6:
Where these C:\Config.Msi\3739be5*.rbfASolution-6.1\ODBC\ DLLs may come from? There is no C:\Config.Msi\ directory on the machine.
Update 2
I noticed that when I test connection via Microsoft Integration Runtime Configuration Manager on the machine or in Data Factory Linked Service, then connection is always performed with ODBC driver of version 7.
But when I test connection via Data Factory Dataset, then in some cases connection is done with ODBC driver of version 6.
You could check the registry but clean at your own risk. An alternative might be the SysIternals tools, Process Monitor or Process Explorer which might help you get to the bottom of this. Install them on the SHIR VM if you are allowed to. Process Explorer in particular is a bit like SQL Profiler (if you've ever used that) so will be able to tell you which registry keys external processes are using. It will give you a lot a lot of information so you will have to make judicious use of timestamp and filtering. The proposed steps:
Start a trace using Process Monitor
Start a pipeline using the Exasol driver
Wait til it completes (or at least you know it has started)
Stop the Process Monitor trace Spend time going through the millions
of records it has captured, trying to filter down, or search for your
process
An alternative would be to build a clean SHIR and install only the new driver. Then swap it in for the old one. You may have to get the new SHIR added to the firewall if this is an issue for you.
Honestly I would propose both of these approached in parallel for a production problem. Procmon / Process Explorer can be quite labour and time expensive but should help you get to the bottom of the issue. Building a cleaner SHIR is probably a safer option in the long-term, but requires new infrastructure.
It may sound silly, but rebooting the server where SHIR is working solved the problem.
We noticed, that this server was running for more than 30 days, and decided to reboot it. Maybe restarting Integration Runtime service itself would also help, but we didn't do it.
Thanks to everyone for you help.

Qt application - uses TLS1.0

UPDATE
Problem persists in some PC's with Windows 7 and 10. Wireshark states that the requests are getting done with Tlsv1.0.
I read that there is a workaround adding registry keys, but though I tried it and none of them work (disabling Tls1.0 and enabling Tls1.1 and 1.2), I don't want my clients to do such a procedure. I want to tell my app to use 1.2 only.
EOU
I wrote an app using Qt, which performs standard get requests to my website in https://www.myprefix.mydomain.com.
Now, the deployed app on Windows works on computers with TLS version 1.2, but the request gets blocked if the computer has TLS 1.0 enabled. To conclude this I wrote a minimal app (hello world, are u there server?) and checked the Wireshark entries in both computers and that appears to be the only difference. According to Wireshark, if TLS1.0 is available, then my app uses TLS1.0 (regardless of the presence of 1.2) and gets blocked.
I know that 1.0 is no longer considered secure, so I want to tell my Qt app to use only TLS1.+.
I would rather not use http (later I'll get sensitive information) and not tell my clients to disable TLS1.0. Can this be hardcoded into the Qt app?
I have tried with this:
QSslConfiguration config = QSslConfiguration::defaultConfiguration();
config.setProtocol(QSsl::TlsV1_2);
QSslConfiguration::setDefaultConfiguration(config);
But the app still uses TLS1.0 when available, and the server blocks the request (rightly so).
The pre-built packages of Qt supports OpenSSL (on Windows and Linux, macOS uses the SecureTransport framework by default) but they don't provide it as there are specific restrictions in some countries regarding software with cryptographic capabilities.
Therefore, if you have your application working and didn't specifically install OpenSSL on your Windows machine, it means that there's a copy of it laying around in your system. You should find it and if possible remove the containing folder from your PATH environment variable.
Next, you should grab a recent version of OpenSSL. Then you can either copy the dlls in your application folder to ensure they get picked modify the PATH environment variable in Qt Creator (the Run part of the Project panel) so your application can find it.
Note that you currently have to use OpenSSL 1.0.X. If you want 1.1 support you can get it starting with Qt 5.10 but you would have to re-build Qt yourself.

Is there any way to get Microsoft Edge Web driver pushed to customers?

I am looking for a way to monitor changes to Microsoft Edge Web driver programmatically.
Some possiblities:
* Would be great if there is an API (REST) to monitor latest available Edge webdriver.
* Since Edge driver is dependent on windows build version. some information about windows 10 build version in the API would be useful.
* Or Even better.. Since Edge driver depends on windows 10 build version, is there any chance for the Edge driver to get shipped with windows 10 builds. something like the native calc.exe in the system32 folder...
Any guidance/information would be very helpful.
Thank you..
Primary versions of Web Driver can always be found on dev.microsoftedge.com. Presently, this includes versions for 10240, 10586, and the Fast Ring of the Windows Insider Program. Monitoring that page will give you insight as to when a newer version of Web Driver is available for Edge.
With regards to your other questions:
Can we have a REST API to identify latest/supported Web Driver / OS versions
Can Web Driver be shipped in Windows 10 directly
I'll reach out to the appropriate team member(s), and see if this is something they've considered.
For the time being, you may be able to infer the machine's build of Windows by leveraging common APIs. For instance, via Node, you could do the following:
require("os").release().match(/\d+$/);
Depending on your build of windows, this will return, [10240], [10586], or some newer build number, like [14379]. You could then use this to instruct the user as to which version of Web Driver they should download.

CSS cross browser compatibility on Ubuntu

I'm currently working in web development and my default desktop is Ubuntu and I'm kind of happy with the setup and applications I got going. But I need to test web pages for cross browser compatibility while still being on Ubuntu.
I have gone through hell trying to get IE7 or IE8 (with wine) to run on ubuntu and when they finally worked they were very buggy and the graphics/scrolling was insanely slow.
Of course there is the option of virtual box but again, too much GBytes just to run a small application!
So to all the CSS gurus out there, how can I continue with my beloved Ubuntu and still deliver a good quality (tested) page.
Thank you.
Edit:
Update for freshness:
I now use the paid service from browserstack.com to provide the multitude of different browser testing environments via flash tunnelling. I'm a paid user, but there is an initial free trial period. browserstack has freed me of the need to run the windows os on my machines in any form, virtual image or otherwise. Since it also allows tunnelling, I can host the site on my local machine but still test in browserstack browsers. I consider the monthly fee money very well spent.
End Edit
Various options I have tried, including "the final solution": free downloadable windows testing OSes from microsoft
I've tried a number of the options below, but virtualbox may be your best bet for full & complete testing, especially because in a professional capacity you often have to test ie8, ie7 -and- ie6. Which gets tricky with only a single os installed. So in order of simplest and most shallowly testing to most complex and most fully testing:
browserlab.adobe.com
A newer, interesting online solution is: browserlab.adobe.com. It's actually very specific and fast compared to browsershots. It only gives you screenshots, but it's a great first step. So I do recommend that for purely visual (and thus relatively shallow) testing.
Browsershots.org
And while browsershots.org is also something that you should use for an overview experience of what users might see, you really can't get by without the real browsers for javascript and behavior testing (instead of just display & rendering testing that browsershots provides). The delay before you can see the images is also killer.
Dual booting into windows
Another that I've tried is dual booting, I work 99% of my time in ubuntu, and I have windows installed & available to dual boot into. Not a fast way to test, but if you don't have any other way to access ie, it should work for at least the latest version.
Remote desktop-ing over to a running windows box
Before I mention the "covers-all-the-bases" option, another useful possibility is to set up a windows machine and boot it up and connect to it via remote desktop so that you can work from one machine and test from both.
The final solution, using virtualbox
Finally, the mother of all solutions, using virtualbox:
Luckily (I know you said you didn't like the virtualbox solution, and I know it's an annoying setup process, but...) Microsoft provides available-for-a-year-or-more virtualmachine distros with different versions of ie pre-installed, available without the need for a license for a year or so before you'd have to update the virtualmachine, #
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en
Installing a virtualmachine from microsoft's freely available browser testing images
Because this guide to setup on ubuntu is no longer available in full anywhere else, just in case you or someone else actually need it I feel compelled to include the actual details of the install process that were suggested to me on the ubuntu forums and worked when I went through them. I apologize for their length. Courtesy of the now anonymous original poster on the ubuntu forums:
Free Access to Microsoft Browser Compatibility Virtual OSes, Install Steps for Ubuntu
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1097080 (Ed: I can't find this thread online any more)
HOWTO: run IE6, IE7, IE8 on Linux in
VirtualBox You need: virtualbox, qemu,
wine
Code: apt-get install virtualbox qemu
wine
Download the free(!) Microsoft
Internet Explorer Application
Compatibility Check VPC Images here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en
(Note: you don't have to download the
full pack, you can cherry pick
specific combinations of XP/Vista and
IE6-8)
Extract the VPC image(s) with wine
(double-click). (Note: it might take a
while before the first window shows
up)
Turn the VPC image(s) into (a) VMWare
image(s) (which is/are readable by
VirtualBox): qemu-img convert -f vpc
image.vhd -O vmdk image.vmdk
Setup a new VM in VirtualBox, using
the vmdk image as an existing disk.
Boot it, you will see the Windows boot
progress bar and ... it will BSOD
shortly after.
Fixing the BSOD:
The BSOD is caused because the virtual
Windows tries to load processor
drivers for the wrong processor (it is
not running on VirtualPC proc, but on
VirtualBox proc). Or something like
that... We need to force Windows not
to attempt to load drivers for the
processor (it doesn't need any proc
drivers, because it's all virtual
anyway). Start safe mode by
(frantically) hitting F8 at Windows
boot and choosing safe mode.
Ignore all the 'New hardware' detected
warnings (we will deal with those
later). Start a command box and run
the following command to disable the
loading of processor drivers:
Code: sc config processor start=
disabled (note the space between '='
and 'disabled'!)
Restart the virtual Windows, it should
now boot all the way to the Windows
Desktop.
Now just when you think you can start
browsing the web with IE, you will
find out that the virtual Windows
needs to install the drivers for the
AMD PCnet NIC, which are located on
the Windows install disk. Fortunately
for those without a Windows install
disk, there is another way :)
Download AMD PCnet drivers here:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_6629_2452%5E2454%5E2486,00.html
Make an iso file containing the
drivers. I used Brasero for
simplicity. Choose to create a Data
Project, add the zip file (or the
unzipped files, saves you a step in
Windows), create the iso. No need to
burn an actual cd!
Stop the virtual Windows, edit the
settings in VirtualBox: mount your
brand new iso.
Start the virtual Windows, when it
asks to install the drivers for the
PCnet nick, point it to the (unzipped)
drivers. Et voila! You have teh
innernets! (Now you can also try to
install the other drivers it complains
for, but it's not really necessary)
The image README says the image will expire after about a year. In my experience the system gets hobbled against multi-hour use, but is still usable for the kind of short periods that you might want when booting up to test a website. At worst you might have to go through these steps again, so be sure to put them somewhere where you can find them again after a year or so.
I think setting up a virtual machine (Virtualbox or VMWare or...) with a proper Windows will be your only (local) option.
I you don't have one, buy a used Windows XP license. XP is cheap (around 20-30 euros here in Germany, for example) and all relevant versions of IE run on it. Home edition is enough. No need for Windows 7 or anything.
You could install IETester on that to get all the IE versions on one OS. IETester has flaws and is not always 100% reliable in what it renders, but for a general CSS compatibility check it should be okay.
I've never tried IE using Wine, but even trying to imagine the combination gives me goose bumps :D
If you have a copy of Windows you could install it in a virtual machine (Virtualbox is a good, free option). Or if you don't mind a lot of lag time and publicly exposing your web pages you could use a service like BrowserShots.
I have not tried this on Ubuntu or anything but windows - but this seems to be a pretty good testing system over the web.
http://spoon.net/browsers/
however, I think your best result would be to use a VM if possible.
I have to add my voice to those opting for VirtualBox.
VMs are the only way to get an accurate representation of how IE platforms behave. They also allow you to keep your main Linux install free of WINE and IE gunk, which is otherwise always troublesome and fragile. (Especially if you're trying to run multiple IEs, which is unreliable and inaccurate even under Windows).
They're not necessarily that big, if you take care to prune the unneeded features, turn off swap, compact the disc image and so on. My XPSP3 test image is just over 800MB.
I didn't want to install all this stuff as I wanted to move forward quick.
I found public AWS images with pre installed browser that you just can start and use.
http://www.hens-teeth.net/html/products/cross_browser_testing.php
If you already have an AWS account this will take you only 5 min. Make sure that you enable the RDP port on the incoming traffic in your security group.
As I use ubuntu I was looking for a way to connect from it to MS Win.
I'm connection on to them via remote desktop.
The way to go here is rdesktop, a command line utility for Windows Remote Desktop. (sudo apt-get install rdesktop)
If you feel like a GUI use tsclient. It's very close to the windows version.
From a work flow perspective I develop for Chrome in Ubuntu first, then have a look at the other browsers via browserlab.adobe.com.
After that I start my new AWS instance to debug.
The small AWS Windows instance is a $0.12 per hour (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing). I can work for a long time on that before it's worth installing all this stuff.
CrossBrowserTesting.com works from Linux. Allows you to access Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu configurations and all the browsers loaded on them via vinagre vnc client.

Sysinternals' Portmon: Error 2

When I try to connect to local ports, Computer -> Connect local, using Portmon v. 3.02, I'm getting an error message, Error 2, in a small error dialog box:
I run the tool as an administrator (if not, I get error 6).
By the way this is a Windows 7 x64. On 32-bit, in Windows 7 x86, it works fine. How can I fix this problem?
Sysinternals' Portmon works only on 32-bit versions of Windows. It does not support 64-bit (probably its driver is not signed).
From the Portmon homepage:
Runs on:
Client: Windows XP (32-bit) and higher (32-bit).
Server: Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) and higher (32-bit).
In Windows Explorer, right click on portmon.exe --> select Properties --> click the Compatibility tab, and Run in Windows XP compatibility mode. It works fine like that in Windows 7 64-bit.
"Error 2" is "Cannot find the file specified", that is, cannot find a required DLL file.
Originally, you got this error when you tried to run Portmon from a network location: that broke the security trust, causing Portmon to be untrusted (or perhaps just messing up the search path somehow).
On my copy of Windows 7 64 bit, Microsoft Dependency Walker (depends.exe) tells me that PORTMSYS.SYS (the file created/loaded by Portmon.exe), has unresolved dependencies on ci.dll, clfs.sys, hal.dll and kdcom.dll.
Those are the
code integrity
common log file system
hardware abstraction layer
kernel debugger com
libraries, and they aren't actually missing: if they were, Windows wouldn't boot. However, I don't see a copy of those files in SysWow64. This suggests to me that the problem is not with portman.sys: the problem is with the win32 compatibility layer in Windows 7/64 bit: It doesn't support debug properly.
It is now 2018. There is no 64-bit version of Portmon. Serial ports are a legacy standard. The Windows 7 problem was fixed by the release of Windows 8.1. However, there is a faint chance that some Visual Studio utility or security update back-ported to Windows 7 will fix the problem. Perhaps someone who is familiar with SysWow and debugging will comment.
Instead of portmon for Windows x64, you can use an emulator of a pair of virtual COM ports and a simple program that will connect the physical port and one of the virtual ones, as well as perform the logging function.
To create a pair of virtual COM ports you can use:
com0com (preferably version "com0com-2.2.2.0-x64-fre-signed", because it contains signed x64 driver)
Virtual Serial Ports Emulator (VSPE), every time it starts on x64 it asks to purchase a driver, but it works even if you refuse.
Simple mapping and logging program can be found e.g. here or you can write it yourself, it is simple.
The sequence of actions is follows:
Сreate a pair of virtual COM ports using emulator (for example, COM28 and COM29)
Let the external device be connected to the computer COM1 port. In the program, whose exchange with external device we want to listen to, we set up a port COM28 (instead of СОМ1) for communication.
In the mapping program, we set up that we want to bind and log ports COM1 and COM29 (don't forget to set the port baud rate).
I haven't tried it yet, but this question mentions com0com. It creates two virtual serial ports and emulates a null modem cable between them. It claims to be able to run on 64 bit Windows. I'm not sure whether it comes with software that lets you just pipe input from a real port into one of the virtual ports. One of the FAQ's says that you can turn on logging.
I guess in the worst case, you could write your own small program that pipes data from a real port to one of the virtual ports and logs it all.
There's also this question on open-source alternatives that mentions a couple of projects.
I've used AccessPort
http://sudt.com/en/ap/download.htm and it works great. Very similar to Portmon
Don't start Portmon from a network drive/path or something else.
Copy on to the hard disk drive, e.g. on the desktop, restart and try again!
If you run Portmon in compatibility mode, it will work.
Check Make older programs run in this version of Windows.
It says:
To run the Program Compatibility troubleshooter:
Open the Program Compatibility troubleshooter by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type troubleshooter, and then click Troubleshooting. Under Programs, click Run programs made for previous versions of Windows.
Follow the instructions in the troubleshooter.
The above is a public explanation from Microsoft for a common situation when running older applications in Windows.
But, I can say it briefly;
Right click on portmon.exe
Select menu about "troubleshooting compatibility problem" or something like that (I'm using a foreign version of Windows, so I don't see correct name of that menu in English.)
Select automatic mode
It will detect the problem and recommend Windows XP (SP2) mode
Select it and execute Portmon again.
I hope it works!
Instead of Portmon you can also use the IO Ninja program with the "Serial Monitor" plugin.
It gives a little less information than Portmon, but in a more understandable form. The main thing is, just like a Portmon, it allows you to see the data that is transmitted between a third-party application and an external device via a serial port. The program works under modern versions of Windows (I tried it myself on Windows 10 x64). The aforementioned plugin "Serial Monitor" is paid (but has an evaluation period).
Note: the port that you want to monitor must first be connected to the "IO Ninja" program, and then opened in a third-party application whose exchange with an external device you want to track.
Just to test that the hardware is working, you could perhaps boot a Linux live CD and run the statserial and/or minicom program to verify that it works. The Knoppix distribution seems to contain both those programs.
Serial ports on Linux are named /dev/ttyS0 for COM1, /dev/ttyS1 for COM2, etc.

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