Set up mainframe SLIP trap

Often times, when you are diagnosing a problem on mainframe, if you contact the tech support of the product, you will be asked to set up a SLIP trap.

When you set up SLIP trap, you can indicate what kinds of events you want trapped and the system conditions for the trap, then specify what action the system is to take when the event occurs during the specified conditions. More info on SLIP trap

How do you set up SLIP trap?

Your SLIP trap may look something as simple as this:

SLIP SET,A=SVCD,COMP=0C4,ID=KC01,JOBLIST=(jobname),END

or something as complicated as this:

SLIP SET,IF,ID=slipid,A=SYNCSVCD,ML=1,ASID=(xxxxx),
ASIDLST=(xxxxx,yyyy,zzzz),PVTMOD=(module,00B0),
DATA=((12R?+60E,EQ,54475249,OR,12R?+60E,EQ,E3C7D9C9),
AND,12R?+756,EQ,E4D5D2D5,
AND,12R?+4A8,EQ,C4C9E2E3,AND,12R?+4AC,EQ,E2C5D9E5),END


If the command spreads for 2 lines are less, you can enter it in SDSF - System Command Extension panel:

However, if it spans for more than 2 lines, you cannot enter it in this panel. You need to create a member in SYS1.PARMLIB with the naming convention IEASLPii and save the command in this member. After saving this member, issue this command on SDSF

/T SLIP=ii

This will enable the SLIP trap.

After you set up the trap, run this MVS system command to display it's status:
/RO lpar,D SLIP=slipid

HTH.

SDSF POS Field

I used to sort the jobs by POS (position) field in SDSF. This puts all the jobs in ascending order by date and time except the jobs that are in input queue or that are currently executing - they always appear in the top.

However, we recently upgraded from z/OS 1.8 to z/OS 1.9 and I don't see it sorted this way any more and the POS field is not populated by any value either. So I asked my sys prog and she asked IBM.

IBM's answer is here:
"The difference your seeing is described by the HOLD data for APAR OA26013 now PE'd by OA27126. The difference in behavior on the panel has to do with a change in the way SDSF gets the jobs/data for the panel. Previously, SDSF read the data from spool which meant running thru the queues and calculating the POS field on its own. These POS values were calculated erroneously by SDSF, assigning a position value to jobs on all queues.

Starting in SDSF 1.9, we're using JES2 SSI calls to acquire the job information which returns the correct POS values assigned by JES2. The POS field on the SDSF ST panel only applies to jobs on the INPUT queue, that is, jobs in-and-awaiting execution, not to any other queues like OUTPUT, SPIN and HARDCOPY.

These changes were necessary to expand support for SDSF to include JES3 compatibility and is considered working as designed."

So, now I'm sorting my jobs by ST-DATE and ST-TIME which is not the same as sorting on POS but comes a little close to that. I miss my POS field :(

PRINT job output and SYSLOG from SDSF

Say, you have run a job and you want to save the job output. How do you do it? There are two ways: either you save a softcopy in a dataset or take a print out.

Note: the following methods work only if you have SDSF.

To save job output to a dataset:

• Go to SDSF
• Type XDC besides the DDName or the job name
• It will pop up a "SDSF Open Print Data Set" menu.
• Fill in the required fields such as Data set name, Disposition, Space units, Primary Quantity, etc and hit enter. When it is done copying the data to the dataset, you'll get "Print Closed" message on the Top Right corner of the screen.

To print job output on a mainframe printer:

• Go to SDSF
• Type XSC besides the DDName or the job name
• It will pop up a printer menu. Fill in the required fields such as Class, copies and other fields and hit enter. It goes to the held queue(usually)
• Go to the Held queue and release it by typing 'O'

Sometimes it is required to print the SYSLOG or part of the SYSLOG to a
data set:

• To print part of the SYSLOG to a preallocated data set:
• Go to SDSF
• Type the PRINT Command like this: PT ODSN SDSF.PRINT * MOD
• Then type the PRINT command with the date and time for which you need to print the log: PT 06.00.00 10/15/2008 10.00.00 10/15/2008
• Then type this command: PT CLOSE