The operating system that natively runs on the AS/400 and iSeries platform is a command and menu driven system, so it's important that you have a good understand of how to use commands and in particular become familiar with commands you will use regularly. For some people the command driven environment is a blessing and a curse, as Windows type of administrators have come to embrace a graphical user interface while those who prefer the command line like on Cisco routers.



First up is probably one of the most frequently used programs on the entire AS/400, and that is Work With Active Jobs and is pulled up by issuing wrkactjob on the command line. Work with active jobs displays all of the performance and status information for all jobs currently active on the entire system. In this program all of the jobs are grouped together by the subsystem they are operating within.

The next command we are going to take a look at is Work With All Printers and is accessed by issuing wkrwtr on the command line. This command displays all of the printers that are configured on the system including important status information. You also have the ability to answer messages like loading a form type, holding the writer from printing spool files and stopping and starting a writer.

The next command is used for shutting down an AS/400 or for restarting it. That command is Power Down System or PWRDWNSYS. This command prepares the system to end by ending subsystems, preventing any new jobs from starting and starts the shut off operations. Power down system has several parameters you can specify for ending in jobs in controlled fashion or immediately along with the option to restart after power down.

Work with all job queues allows you to see the status of all of the job queues you are authorized to. Just like working with printers you can hold and release job queues from this command as well as move jobs waiting to run over to other queues, change their run priority and other characteristics. I often use this command to re-route jobs like RPG compiles into another job queue and subsystem like QPGMR so it does not interfere with regular operations.

So far we have really only scratched the surface of useful commands on the AS/400 and iSeries systems, however the ones I covered are certainly used in the day to day operations of things. Although I won't cover them in detail now you will probably also use Work With Configuration status or WRKCFGSTS to vary devices on and off, Work With Spool Files or WRKSPLF to look at and control printable output. Work with Disk Status or WRKDSKSTS displays the current health of the disk array on the system including simple read write performance metrics and it can be used to view the current RAID configurations and can be used to identify if a parity or mirror has been compromised due to a failed disk with having to log into the dedicated service tools utilities.