A Program Temporary Fix, PTF, designed to eradicate bugs in IBM’s OS/400 operating system, is creating even greater problems for users, according to the West German weekly Computerwoche. The paper reports that the PTF installation process must be overseen by an operator, it requires the entire system to be shut down for 24 hours, and interferes with large parts of the operating system. Users are also complaining that PTF tapes, brought out every six weeks by IBM, have compounded tape drive problems created by the bugs. Donald Friedman, market strategy chief of IBM’s Application Business Systems Division, says that the company is working day and night to produce a less troublesome solution. By August, Friedman claims, IBM will provide a streamlined the fixes, compressing 28 different steps in to two or three, and cutting PTF installation time to around eight hours. Friedmann also dismissed allegations that PTF tapes have led to widespread problems, arguing that this applied only to a small minority of cases. He did concede that users who had yet to install PTF 1.2, out last November, might run into difficulties.
