Fully support Rich's advice.
Test systems are there for a reason, even if the best expert in the IT industry can give solid advice, there are always "nuanced" configurations to all environments that even said experts might not be aware off.
So the mantra is always as follows: (with some LLM magic)
The Sacred IT Change Control Ritual
Also known as: "Don't Break Production Today, Please."
🔍 1. Investigate First
"Know thy system. Know thy dependencies. Know thy deadlines. Google is not effective much in the moment after clicking 'Deploy'."
📊 2. Do an Impact Analysis
"If a change falls in the forest of twigs and no one documents its impact, will your production notification's still scream at 3am? Yes. Yes it will."
🧠 3. Verify Impacts
"Don't just guess who's affected. Be the Sherlock Holmes of systems: trace, map, and document. Bonus points for flowcharts."
🙋♂️ 4. Ask for the Knowns - and the Unknowns
"There's no shame in asking dumb questions. Only in not asking and then crashing payroll."
🧪 5. Test It Like You Mean It
"Test in QA like your coffee supply depends on it. Because once PROD goes down, it absolutely does."
📋 6. Confirm Findings (and Rectify Any Weirdness)
"The logs don't lie. But if they do - dig deeper. Fix it now or fix it later under pressure with three people watching."
🔁 7. Confirm the Rollback Plan
"Calm nerves with a solid escape route. Rollbacks are the parachutes of change control. Pack them well."
🧘♂️ 8. Breathe, Light Incense, Proceed to Production
"Only when all stakeholders are calm, and the server gods have been appeased, may you deploy. Candles optional. Logs and verifications mandatory."
🧹 9. Document, Debrief, Delight
"Share the journey. Celebrate the minimal impact results deploy. Learn from the bumps. Then quietly vanish like a deployment ninja."
📿 Repeat:
"I test, therefore I sleep. I rollback, therefore I survive. I communicate, therefore I am not blamed."
------------------------------
Marius le Roux theIBMiGuy
Owner , IBM i Consultant & Technology Strategist
MLR Consulting
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: Wed June 04, 2025 03:00 PM
From: Rich Malloy
Subject: Minimum password length change
That should only effect new passwords not existing...otherwise, gee..what would happen to all the existing profiles/passwords that don't need that requirement...Assuming you have access to test system...you can definitely get your toes wet doing it there before doing it on your prod system...
------------------------------
Rich Malloy
Principal Systems Engineer - IBMi
Cox Automotive
Draper UT
Original Message:
Sent: Wed June 04, 2025 03:28 AM
From: Stephen Chow
Subject: Minimum password length change
I'm planning to increase the minimum length via the system value QPWDMINLEN.
After the change, if I want to restore a user profile from security data, and its password is less than the minimum password length requirement, is it still allowed to restore the password group and reuse the old password?
------------------------------
Stephen Chow
------------------------------