We hope everyone had a relaxing Memorial Day weekend!  For those of you that attended WAVV - it was great to see you as always!  Remember you can always send us an email with ideas or tips you would like to see in a future iTips newsletter!

Enjoy this week's iTip and enjoy your week!

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This Week's iTip!

TCP/IP TELNET Sessions

While attempting to debug a CICS/TS problem, I encountered some strange entries in the CICS message log.  This problem started out as a transaction abend AICA (which we all know is a runaway task and, most of the time, is an applications programmer error.)  Apparently when the user’s terminal locked up due to the runaway task, they rudely terminated their Telnet session and restarted it.  When CICS/TS finished processing his AICA abend dump, and tried to find the terminal and it wasn’t there, so CICS drove the terminal autoinstall program to fix it.  Continuing thru the message log, I found message DFHZC3492  indicating an invalid NIBUSER Token, then DFHZC6903 attempting to autoinstall the terminal as an SNA terminal, which then produced DFHZC5995 CICS Logic Error and DFHZC3422 Autoinstall failed.

     Since we all are aware that Telnet definitions are NON-SNA type definitions (and I have absolutely NO SNA definitions in this particular system at all), I found this very puzzling.  Why was it choosing an SNA Logmode to autoinstall with?  

     I started searching on IBM and found a rather recent Problem/Solution that described this scenario perfectly.  The link to the problem description is:

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21108369

     It basically states that if your VTAM APPL definitions for your telnet sessions do not have a DLOGMOD= in them, to put DLOGMOD on them.  When CICS drives the SIMLOGON and the APPL doesn’t have a logmode, CICS will generally take the first logmode in whatever MODETAB you have defined (which in the case above, was not the proper logmode.)  Per the article above, the logmode that is chosen may, or may not, be a good logmode, depending on your particular shop’s MODETAB.

     In the past, I had my VTAM APPL definitions coded as described in the TCP/IP manual.  I have now added DLOGMOD=SP3272EN to all of them to eliminate this particular problem.  This will only have an effect when CICS initiates the SIMLOGON, and does need to be a NON-SNA logmode.  The TN3270 session configuration that you specify when you initially connect, will be in effect under “normal” circumstances.

     Now I can get back to what I was looking for when I ran across this problem.

Do you have something to add to this tip? Add it to the VSEWiki page!

z/IPMon^® - Now with New Advisor™ Facility!

Experience a Live VSE System Running z/IPMon Today!

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What's more, the Release 2.0 of z/IPMon now ships with a complete Report Writer capability called z/IPUtil™. You can select any of the fields of data that are captured and create a report with any of the fields, in any order, complete with subtotal and sorting abilities. Rather than create "canned" reports which may be too limiting, we gave you the ability to report on whatever you need, with simple, easy to understand "select"  type statements in the JCL.

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Understanding Your TCP/IP System - A White Paper

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