Advent of Code 2025 — Day 01 solved in ILE RPG (dial wrap logic, %rem). Code and notes on GitHub.

Single Level Storage — Part 4: pointer tagging explained. Learn how IBM i uses tag bits (in memory and on disk) and processor support to enforce isolation without separate address spaces.

Discover how IBM i’s single level storage unifies memory and disk into one address space—no explicit file I/O, automatic caching, fast process switching, and implicit memory sharing. Plus: why security is different.

Single level storage, Part 2: a clear tour of virtual memory OS design—MMU, process isolation, paging/swapping, and disk access—before we dive into IBM i’s model.

A simplified introduction to single level storage on IBM i—covering memory addressing, processor operations, disk management, and how real memory systems work.

A guide to GO NETS: IBM’s command-line tool for managing IBM i NetServer (SMB file sharing) from a 5250 session. Covers installation, usage, and the benefits of a terminal-based approach

Everything you need to know about LODRUN on IBM i—how it works, when to use it, and how it can make program loading and running easier.

Why Unicode matters for IBM i: move beyond EBCDIC limitations with UTF-8 and UTF-16 support for multilingual DB2 data and global applications.

A deep dive into how IBM i stores user passwords, the evolution of its hashing algorithms, and what recent security improvements mean for your system.

Introduction

If you ask 10 IBM i administrators about the best placement for journal receivers, you will likely get 11 different answers. The truth is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the optimal placement depends on various factors such as system workload, storage architecture, and recovery objectives. Also, hardware and software changed significantly over the years, so recommendations that were valid 10 or 20 years ago may not be applicable today.