Automatic reply to annoying messages

Hi Readers,

I came across one such annoying message that the user reported several times in last week. The user was trying to take a PDF file using one virtual printer, and the message was " Load form type "INVOICES" to device XXXXXX writer XXXXXX. (G B I H R C). Message ID CPA3394. It was simple to reply the message with G or I and get the print files. However, the user was on Linton Shafer and did not even understand basics of AS400. All they need to do is finalize some invoices and get printouts in form of PDF.

First, I explained her how she can reply the message so that she need not have to wait for me to get the printouts. However, she seemed to be stubborn. She wanted me to reply her messages, whenever she prints and I have to be available for her to do her work. It was simple thing and quiet easier if she could simply check and reply the message. But, no she won't take that pain. So, you can understand how it is. I searched how I can best sort this issue and came across this easy solution. I added automatic reply to table for the messages from her ID with CPA3394 message ID and reply with "I" option.

Now, lets see how to do it.

To see the Reply list table type, Command is WRKRPYLE

To add the reply to the table,

ADDRPYLE  SEQNBR(50) MSGID(CPA3394) CMPDTA(XXXXXX) RPY(I).

Its done. Huh!! its so easy, is not it.

Convert Date from one format to another using CL

Hi,

Convert date command is designed to convert date from one format to other. CVTDAT command can only be used in CL or ILE- CL procedure. This command first checks for a Valid date and then converts the date to other format. It works with QLEAPADJ System value.

PGM PARM(&INDATE &VALID)

     DCL VAR(&INDATE) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(6)
     DCL VAR(&VALID)  TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(1)
     DCL VAR(&JUNK)   TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(8)

     CHGVAR VAR(&VALID) VALUE(Y)

     CVTDAT DATE(&INDATE) FROMFMT(*MDY) +
            TOVAR(&JUNK) TOFMT(*YYMD) TOSEP(*NONE)

     MONMSG MSGID(CPF0550 CPF0551 CPF0552 CPF0553 +
                  CPF0555 CPF0556 CPF0557) +
     EXEC(DO)
        CHGVAR VAR(&VALID) VALUE(N)
     ENDDO

     SNDPGMMSG MSGDTA(&VALID) MSGTYPE(*COMP) MSGF(QCPFMSG) +
               MSGID(CPF9897)

ENDPGM

Authorization needed to run debug command in AS400

Hi Readers,

Today, I got a call from our developer who went on a long vacation. She returned back today and was unable to debug certain programs that she had created long back. In the meanwhile, we had a major hardware and software upgrade of our system.

So, when I heard this, my first quest was may be the default Authorization list that was created before, has been changed. Might be she has been removed from one of the authorization list. When I explored I did not find any changes and she had same level of authorization as her other team mates. Then I checked for the command she was running, I found her user profile missing in authorization list created to use STRDBG command. Here, is a list of authority that a user needs to be able to run Start Debug command.

• *USE authority to the Start Debug (STRDBG) command.
• *USE authority to the End Debug (ENDDBG) command.
• *USE authority to the Start Service Job (STRSRVJOB) command.
• *USE authority to the End Service Job (ENDSRVJOB) command.
• Either *CHANGE authority to the program or Java class being debugged, or *USE authority to the program being debugged and *SERVICE special authority.

If the job that you are debugging is running under a different user profile than the user profile you use to sign on to the iSeries system from the debugger, the user profile that you use to sign on to the iSeries system from the debugger must have the following authorities:

• *USE authority to the user profile that the job you are debugging is running under.
• *JOBCTL special authority if you do not explicitly use fully qualified program names (library/program). In other words, if you use *CURLIB or *LIBL or you do not specify a library name, you need to have *JOBCTL special authority.

The group profile QPGMR gives you the correct authority to the STRDBG, ENDDBG, STRSRVJOB, and ENDSRVJOB commands and *JOBCTL special authority.

Easiest method to find the number of users logged into the system

Hi,

The easiest method to find the number of user logged into AS400 system, is by issuing command WRKSYSSTS ( Work with system status).

Take F21 ( shift +F9)

Take option 1 (basic) in Assistance level, 

Press Enter,

You will get in Users section, Number of signed on users. In below example, 12 users are signed on.

How to limit a user profile to one particular subsystem or limiting the user to submit his job to a particular subsystem?

Hi Readers,

You must be thinking why it is required to limit a user profile to access a particular subsystem or submit job to one particular subsystem. Why and how is it beneficial?

Well we can do this by creating a private subsystem or a separate subsystem or by assigning the user profile to access only that subsystem. Now, when is it required. In scenario's where you want a user to access the system resource during a particular time period. For example, in most of the IT scenario's the admin department accesses the system in OOH(Out of office hours). It is not required by other user's to access the system during this time. You might need only the admin team to carry on with their processes during backups or when system is in restricted state. For this, if you set up a separate subsystem and assign the team members of Admin team to it, then you can bring down QINTER subsystem ( default subsystem for all interactive users) thus restricting all users except Admin to access the system.

Lets now, see how you can create a private or separate interactive subsystem and segregate user profiles to access them.

1- Create new subsystem for interactive processing.
2- Create a job queue that feeds interactive jobs to that subsystem and assigns that job queue to the subsystem.
3- Change your subsystem attributes to allow specific workstation names or workstation type to enter this subsystem.
4- Change QINTER attributes to not allow the devices and jobs which are intended to run in private subsystem.

Note :- This process allocates the devices ( that is workstation by name or type) to the particular subsystem and does not restrict the user profile. When a user profile signs on the the particular device, it automatically redirects to this subsystem.

1 - Create Subsystem :- 

Let us now create a new interactive subsystem named QINTER1.

We can use CRTSBSD or CRTDUPOBJ to create this subsystem.

CRTDUPOBJ OBJ(QINTER) FROMLIB(QSYS) OBJTYPE(*SBSD) TOLIB(QGPL) NEWOBJ(QINTER1)

2- Create Job queue to feed new subsystem :- 

Use CRTJOBQ to create a new JOBQ.

CRTJOBQ JOBQ(QGPL/QINTER1) TEXT ( NEW JOB QUEUE FOR INTERACTIVE WORK)

3- Add Job Queue to new subsystem to accept the jobs from the Job queue.

Use command ADDJOBQE

ADDJOBQE SBSD(QGPL/QINTER1) JOBQ(QGPL/QINTER1) MAXACT(*NOMAX) SEQNBR(30)

4- Since, QINTER1 is a duplicate of QINTER, it inherits QINTER Job Queue. Need to remove this QINTER job queue from QINTER1 subsystem, so that jobs that should run under QINTER will go there and not be diverted to QINTER1.

Use RMVJOBQE
RMVJOBQE SBSD(QGPL/QINTER1) JOBQ(QSYS/QINTER)

Check, which all JOBQ was added to QINTER subsystem and remove them from QINTER1 as it is a copy of QINTER subsystem. To do this, DSPSBSD SBSD(QINTER)

TAKE OPTION 6 :- JOB QUEUE ENTRIES
Seq  Job                       Max   ---------Max by Priority----------
Nbr  Queue       Library     Active   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9
 10  QINTER      QGPL        *NOMAX   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
 20  QS36MRT     QGPL        *NOMAX   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

This means, QINTER subsystem, feeds QINTER and QS36MRT job queues to it. So, now remove QS36MRT from QINTER1 subsystem job queue enteries.

RMVJOBQE SBSD(QGPL/QINTER1) JOBQ(QS36MRT)

5- Limit the workstation types that can enter subsystem QINTER1.

To authorize workstation whose name start with letter AD* (exa -AD001, AD002)

ADDWSE SBSD(QINTER1) WRKSTN(AD*)


You can view which all workstation are added for this subsystem QINTER1 by DSPSBSD SBSD(QINTER1)

Take option:-

4. Work station name entries
5. Work station type entries

You could see AD* in option 4 and *CONS and *ALL in option 5. You can remove *CONS and *ALL and thus it will limit access only to AD* workstation.

To remove,

RMVWSE SBSD(QGPL/QINTER1) WRKSTNTYPE(*CONS)

RMCWSE SBSD(QGPL/QINTER1) WRKSTNTYPE(*ALL)

What is colocation?

A Colocation center is a type of data center, where space, bandwidth are available for rental. The organization basically provides, physical safety of your server with rental charges on space, bandwidth, network facility and safety of the server at a minimal cost. The organization, handles many customer servers under the same roof.

Sometimes, the organization might provide you the data center management as well. This is quiet common in IT sector, due to the connectivity over internet. Organizations, like to focus on IT work instead of managing and building its own data center. However, when your organization is considering Colocation facility , you need to focus on the Service Level agreement, and look if it has some hidden rules or charges.

In my experience, my organization has have a colocation facility for its DR system. We have the production system in our own data center. Since, DR system needs to be kept at another location, taking up Colocation was a best choice, as we need not require to build another data-center for DR system. But, yes Colocation facility could be a concern if you manually need to visit the site often. That would incur to additional expenses. In our case, we had a agreement with the Colocation provider to raise ticket with them to provide any authorized person to get access to it when needed. And when need arises, we let the Vendor IBM to provide Customer Engineer (CE) to visit that location and fix the issues. Though, this is little tedious compared to getting CE at our own premises, but its manageable. For, AS400 system colocation facility is apt according to me as this is quite robust and does not usually need a manual intervention. 

Changing IP address of the system

Hi Readers,

I had kept busy for a while so could not blog in meanwhile. Now, the latest challenge in my work place is to get one of our iSeries system moved to another data center. This machine will have to moved to its assigned data center via another place. So, we might have to change its IP address and work with data mirror IP address change twice before we settle this.

Since, I would connect to it remotely and won't have any physical connection, we have things to clarify before we go ahead and do it.

In IBM TCP-IP, we can add the new IP address before we shut down the system and after it is relocated to it destination, we can remove the old IP address and connect to the new one. So, how to get this done. Here is a set of procedure for it.

The following are steps to change a TCP/IP address on IBM OS/400 or IBM i5/OS:
    1.
    On an operating system command line, type the following:
   
    CFGTCP
   
    Press the Enter key, and select Option 1.
    2.
    Select Option 10 to end the Interface.
    3.
    Press F12 to get back to the Configure TCP menu.
    4.
    Select Option 2 to work with routes.
    5.
    If there is a route that is associated with the interface, it will need to be removed.  Otherwise, you will get an error later when trying to remove the old TCP/IP address.  (Press F6 to print this screen.  It will go to your spooled file so you can have a record of it.)
    6.
    Once the route is removed, press F12 to return to the configure TCP screen.
    7.
    Select Option 1 to work with TCP interfaces.
    8.
    Select Option 1 to add the new TCP/IP address.
    9.
    Select Option 9 to start the new TCP/IP address.
    10.
    Select Option 4 to remove the old TCP/IP address.
    11.
    Press F11 and the new TCP/IP address should be in an active status.
    12.
    Press F12 to get to the Configure TCP/IP menu.
    13
    Select Option 2 to work with TCP/IP routes.
    14.
    Select Option 1 to add a route if needed.
    15.
    Press F12 to get to the Configure TCP/IP menu.
    16.
    Select Option 10 to work with the Host Table.  If you have the old TCP/IP address associated with the Host Name of the iSeries family system, you must remove the old address, then add a Host Name with the new TCP/IP address.  If you do not have anything there, then you do not have to do anything.
    17.
    Press F12 to get to the Configure TCP/IP menu again.
    18.
    Select Option 12 to change TCP/IP Domain.  If the TCP/IP address of a Domain name server changes too, you will change it here.  If you do not have an external Domain name server, then you will not need to make any changes.
    19.
    Your PCs should now be able to connect to the new TCP/IP address on OS/400 or i5/OS.
   
Similarly, we can change the IP address in data mirror. Since, we are using icluster, we have option to add the new IP address. Just before, shuting the system, we can change the IP address and then shut the system down for shipping.