000-221 · Question #218
With regard to planned maintenance, which statement about interim fix management is correct?
The correct answer is D. If the updates include the official APAR, the update_all process will automatically uninstall the interim fix. When a planned update includes the official PTF for an APAR, the AIX update_all process automatically uninstalls the superseded interim fix without administrator intervention.
Question
With regard to planned maintenance, which statement about interim fix management is correct?
Options
- AThe interim fix must be manually committed prior to applying the updates.
- BThe interim fix will be automatically committed as part of the update process.
- CIf the fileset associated with interim fix will not be updated, it still needs to be temporarily rejected.
- DIf the updates include the official APAR, the update_all process will automatically uninstall the interim fix
How the community answered
(23 responses)- A9% (2)
- B4% (1)
- C9% (2)
- D78% (18)
Why each option
When a planned update includes the official PTF for an APAR, the AIX update_all process automatically uninstalls the superseded interim fix without administrator intervention.
Manually committing an interim fix before applying updates is not required because the update process itself handles ifix removal when the official superseding PTF is present.
Interim fixes are not automatically committed during the update process - they are instead automatically uninstalled when the official fix that supersedes them is installed.
If the fileset associated with an interim fix is not included in the current update, the ifix can remain installed without conflict and does not need to be temporarily rejected.
The interim fix manager (emgr) integrates with the AIX update process so that when a PTF containing the official resolution for an APAR is applied, the corresponding ifix is automatically removed to prevent conflicts between the temporary and permanent fixes. This automation eliminates the need for manual ifix rejection or commitment steps when the superseding code level is part of the update.
Concept tested: AIX interim fix automatic removal during PTF updates
Source: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/aix/7.3?topic=e-emgr-command
Topics
Community Discussion
6
Anjali D.Apr 22, 2026The answer is D, and this one tripped up a few people in our group at first. The key idea is that an interim fix (ifix) is a temporary patch applied via the emgr utility to address a specific APAR until the official fix ships in a service pack or update. When you run update_all and that official APAR fix is included in the update bundle, AIX is smart enough to automatically uninstall the interim fix for you, because the permanent fix is now taking its place. You do not need to manually reject or commit the ifix ahead of time, which rules out A and C, and the ifix is not being committed as part of the update flow, which rules out B. The system handles the housekeeping for you in that scenario, which is the whole point of D. A couple of folks in the group initially leaned toward A thinking you had to commit the ifix first to lock in the file state, but that confuses the commit step (which makes an ifix permanent and harder to remove) with the update scenario where the official fix makes the ifix redundant. If anyone has seen a case where the automatic uninstall did not happen as expected, would love to hear what conditions caused that.
Yusuf A.Apr 4, 2026That one tripped me up too because I assumed the system would just leave the interim fix alone if it was already patched, but apparently when the official APAR rolls in through update_all, AIX handles the cleanup for you automatically. The senior on my team mentioned something about the system recognizing the fix is now baked into the base fileset, which is why manual rejection is not needed. Does that mean if the update_all run does NOT include the official APAR, you would have to reject the interim fix yourself before the update can proceed?
Lena V.Mar 31, 2026D is right, though "automatically" does the heavy lifting, since update_all handles interim fix removal only when the official APAR is included in the update set.
Viktor S.Mar 31, 2026"Automatically" is doing work there, but worth being precise: update_all removes the interim fix because it detects the superseding PTF, not just because an APAR is present in the set, so if the PTF resolves the APAR but ships without the supersede record populated correctly, the interim fix stays put and you get a conflict.
Viktor S.Apr 16, 2026B is the one that actually makes sense if you think about what the update process is designed to do, it handles the interim fix lifecycle for you so you are not manually juggling commits mid-maintenance window, which would defeat the whole point of a managed update process. The whole design philosophy is that the system takes care of committing that fix automatically so you do not introduce human error into a planned outage.
Yusuf A.Apr 19, 2026Viktor, I hear you but I think it is actually D on this one, because the update process does not auto-commit interim fixes for you, you have to commit them yourself before the process can continue. A senior here walked me through this last month and that manual commit step is exactly what catches people off guard.