At 04:54 PM 10/12/98 -0600, John Garrigues wrote:
>Here's the official word from HP.
>
>The following is a letter that HP CSY will be sending to customers today.
>     __________________________________________________________________
>
>     October 8, 1998
>
>
>
>     Dear Valued HP 3000 Customer:
>
>
>     Late last week, HP discovered a problem with the MPEKX79 patch. The
>     MPEKX79 patch was included in MPE/iX Release 5.5 Powerpatch 5 via the
>     patch MPEKXB5. As a result, the MPE/iX Release 5.5 Powerpatch 5 has
>     been placed on temporary production hold and the distribution of the
>     MPEKX79 patch and its affected successors (see the list under the
>     Important Note section) have been stopped. The problem has already
>     been characterized and a new generally released patch that resolves
>     the issue will be available by October 15th, 1998.

/snip

>     Attempts to fix the problem with a database tool such as Adager or DB
>     General result in relinking the old, undeleted data back into the set
>     with the newly added data.

Speaking for DBGeneral, rebuilding the search path for a dataset which has
experienced this problem is not the proper repair.  This approach will indeed
cause additional problems, further compounding the situation.

To correct the original problem, DBGeneral users should use the high-speed
dataset/database erase option (4.4) to again, erase the database.  This
feature works at the file extent level to fill all allocated file extents
with zeros, which is why it is not subject to the problems encountered by
DBUTIL/ERASE's cut-back/expand technique.  This is also why DBGeneral's
ERASE feature is faster than DBUTIL (doesn't deallocate/re-allocate extents)
and others techniques which may incur the performance cost of using file
system writes.

As with any suspected database damage, I would encourage discussing the
situation with your database tool provider before attempting any database
repairs.



/jf
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                      Monday, October 19th

          Today in 1781 - The Revolutionary War ended.
                   1943 - Senator Hatti Caraway (Ark.) was the
                          1st woman to preside over the Senate.

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