Symptoms of the failure

You can identify an abend by one or more of the following indicators:

The printed system output of a program
A system message's text
An ISMF abend panel
An ISPF abend panel
A TSO/E message identifying an abend condition
A SYS1.LOGREC record
An SVC DUMP

The means by which the system indicates an abend condition provides sufficient evidence (message prefix or text, operation performed, module that detected the failure, ISMF abend panel, and so forth) to determine which DFSMSdfp component received the abend.

A damaged Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) data set can cause an ABEND0C4 in any of these modules (repairing the data set resolves the problem):

IDA019RC
IDA019RE
IDA019RF
IDA019RG
IDA019RH
IDA019RI
IDA019RJ
IDA019RN
IDA019RW
IDA019R4

To determine whether you have a damaged data set, use the IDCAMS EXAMINE command as described in the topic on functional command format in z/OS DFSMS Access Method Services Commands and the topic on checking a VSAM key-sequenced data set cluster for structural errors in z/OS DFSMS Using Data Sets. The EXAMINE command provides details about the nature of data set damage.

For more information on diagnosing problems with damaged VSAM RLS data sets, refer to VSAM record management (R/M) diagnostic aids.