SET ABEND

Authorization

Privilege Class: B

Purpose

Use SET ABEND to force soft errors to cause system termination with hard abend format dump, full system snapdumps, or to prevent soft abend dumps from being generated.

Operands

HARD: specifies that any soft abend causes full system termination with a dump and then attempts to restart the system.
HARD aaannn: specifies the soft abend with abend code aaannn, where aaa is the three character module identifier and nnn is the three character abend code number, causes full system termination, but other soft abends continue to be processed normally.
OFF: specifies that any soft abend will not generate a soft abend dump. A symptom record will be created to provide a record of the abend.
OFF aaannn: specifies the soft abend with abend code aaannn will not generate a soft abend dump. A symptom record will be created to provide a record of the abend.
SNAPDUMP: specifies that any soft abend causes a full system snapdump.
SNAPDUMP aaannn: specifies the soft abend with abend code aaannn causes a full system snapdump, but other soft abends continue to be processed normally.
SOFT: cancels all previous specifications of HARD, HARD aaannn, OFF, OFF aaannn, SNAPDUMP and SNAPDUMP aaannn. All soft abends operate normally as established during system initialization.
SOFT aaannn: specifies the soft abend with abend code aaannn will generate a soft abend. This effectively cancels any previous specification of HARD aaannn, OFF aaannn, or SNAPDUMP aaannn. Also, SOFT aaannn will override any global HARD, OFF or SNAPDUMP specification for the soft abend with abend code aaannn.

Usage Notes

If any invalid abend code (operand does not have aaannn format) is encountered when a specific abend code is specified with any SET ABEND operand, no soft abend settings are changed.
You can specify up to 20 unique soft abend codes with one or more invocations of the SET ABEND command.
The abend codes (aaannn) are inspected for format validity. The aaa piece consists of three characters that can be any combination uppercase letters A-Z, lowercase letters a-z, or numbers 1-9. The nnn piece is a three digit decimal number from 000 to 255. The abend code is not inspected to determine whether it corresponds to a soft abend that is actually present in the system.
Code that is running as part of CP requests abends by using the HCPABEND macro. If the part containing the HCPABEND macro does not start with 'HCP' then the name of the module is stored in lowercase in the HCPABEND macro expansion. When a dump is created, the first three characters of the abend code is in lowercase. This is done because it allows support personnel to quickly identify abends that are not generated from a standard IBM CP nucleus part. This lowercase letter convention affects code that is added to CP via the CPXLOAD command or by using an alternate MDLAT macro and the VMSES/E command GENCPBLS. By using upper or lowercase letters with abend codes specified on SET ABEND, HCP and non-HCP abends can be handled differently.
An abend code containing lowercase characters can be specified on the SET ABEND command that is passed to CP using the DIAGNOSE X'08' programming interface. This could be done in a REXX EXEC or an assembler program. Also, a lowercase abend code can be passed using "Address Command" in a REXX EXEC. However, the simplest way is to use CMS Pipelines. A pipe command like the following could be passed to CMS to invoke a CP command.
```
PIPE CP SET ABEND HARD bcd001 efg002 | console
```
Note that the "SET ABEND HARD" part of the command must be specified in uppercase so that it passes tests in the CP parsing code. Specify abend code(s) in upper or lowercase, as necessary.
There may be some unique circumstances which will prevent a dump from being created despite having the ABEND set to SNAPDUMP. This will only occur if SNAPDUMP cannot get the resource which guarantees that no other processor in the configuration will force the abending processor offline. If a dump was to be taken at this time, its contents would not accurately reflect the abending environment.
When SET ABEND is issued for HARD, OFF, or SNAPDUMP, the soft abend dump spool file is automatically closed. This is a class D spool file that is normally opened during system initialization and is owned by the user ID specified with the DUMP operand on the SYSTEM_USERIDS configuration statement. It has a file type of "HCPDUMP". Once closed, it can be reopened by issuing SET ABEND SOFT or SET ABEND SOFT aaannn.

Examples

Specific invocations are cumulative. For example:

SET ABEND HARD ABC001 BCD002

Will add soft abends ABC001 and BCD002 to the abend table, indicating that they should cause a hard abend if hit.

SET ABEND SNAP BCD002 CDE003 DEF004

The abend table will now have 1 soft abend set to hard (ABC001), and 3 soft abends set to snapdump (BCD002, CDE003 and DEF004).

SET ABEND SOFT CDE003

Will reset soft abend CDE003 from generating a snapdump abend back to a soft abend. The other abends are not affected.

Global invocations (no specific abend specified) reset all previously set specific abends. For example (assuming the preceding invocations are still in effect), suppose the following command is entered:

SET ABEND OFF

The preceding soft abends that have been set to hard, soft, and snapdump, along with all of the remaining soft abends, will not generate a dump.

Messages

HCP002E Invalid operand - operand
HCP003E Invalid option - {option|command contains extra option(s) starting with option}
HCP026E Operand missing or invalid
HCP400I All {paging|spooling} space is in use.
HCP439E {User userid|*NSS|*IMG|*UCR|*NLS} spool fileid limit exceeded
HCP475I Fatal I/O error trying to read directory from volid [for user userid]
HCP847E Maximum system spool file limit exceeded
HCP1011I Maximum number of unique inhibited soft abends exceeded.
HCP9308I Spooling I/O error occurred while reading or writing a system data file.
HCP9309E CP was unable to allocate a soft abend dump file.