IBM Support

IBM® Support assists with problems in your software.

Contacting IBM Support

Before you contact IBM Support, you must ensure that your company has an active IBM software subscription and support contract, and that you are authorized to submit problems to IBM. For more information about how to contact and use IBM Support, see the IBM Support Guide.

For example, for IBM distributed software products that run on the Windows or UNIX operating systems, one way that you can get support is by enrolling in Passport Advantage®. You can enroll in one of the following ways.

Online: Go to the Passport Advantage web page and click Enroll in Passport Advantage.
By telephone: For the telephone number to call in your country, go to the IBM Support Guide to find the telephone numbers to use to contact support for your geographic region or location. Go to the open a case from the phone section of this website.

If you are not sure what type of software subscription and support contract you need, call 1-800-IBMSERV (1-800-426-7378) in the United States. From other countries, go to the IBM Support Guide to find the telephone number.

Use the following steps to contact IBM Support:

Determine the effect of the problem on your business
Describe your problem and gather background information
Submit your problem to IBM Support

Determine the effect of the problem on your business

When you report a problem to IBM, you are asked to supply a severity level. Therefore, you need to understand and assess the effect on your business of the problem that you are reporting. Use the following criteria:

Severity 1: The problem has a critical effect on your business. You are unable to use the program, resulting in a critical effect on operations. This condition requires an immediate solution.
Severity 2: The problem has a significant effect on your business. The program is usable but is severely limited.
Severity 3: The problem causes some effect on your business. The program is usable, but less significant features (not critical to operations) are not available.
Severity 4: The problem has a minimal effect on your business. The problem has little effect on operations, or a reasonable workaround to the problem was implemented.

Describe your problem and gather background information

When you are explaining a problem to IBM, be as specific as possible. Include all relevant background information so that IBM Support specialists can help you to solve the problem efficiently.

To save time, know the answers to the following questions because IBM Support is likely to ask for this information:

What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
Do you have logs, traces, and messages that are related to the problem symptoms?
Can the problem be re-created? If so, what steps led to the problem?
Were any changes made to the system? For example, hardware, operating system, networking software, and other changes.
Are you currently using a workaround for this problem? If so, be prepared to explain what you are doing when you report the problem.

Use the following lists to gather important information about the software you are using. Some items might not be relevant in every situation, but provide as much information as you can to enable IBM Support to re-create your problem. For AIX® and Linux®, you can also use the IBM Support Assistant Team Server to help with data collection.

For Financial Transaction Manager

The product version.
Any fix packs that are applied.
Any interim fixes that are applied.
All current trace and error logs, including relevant Windows Event log, Linux and UNIX operating system syslog entries, or z/OS® SYSLOG entries.
Details of the operation that you were doing, the results that occurred, and the results that you were expecting.
A sample of the messages that were being used when the problem arose.

For IBM App Connect Enterprise

The product version.
Any fix packs that are applied.
Any interim fixes that are applied.
Any abend or dump files. When a process does not end normally, an abend file is generated. An abend entry is made in the syslog or the Windows Event log. The abend entry contains details about the location of the abend file.
Obtain user trace log files at debug level for all relevant message flows and preferably format them. Also, include any requested service trace files. Send these files to IBM Support.
- To send files from distributed systems, create a compressed file by using any compression utility.
- To send a file from the file system to IBM, use the tar command to compress the file. For example, tar -cx -f coredump.0002009E coredump.toibm.
- To send MVS™ data sets to IBM, terse them using TRSMAIN. For more information about getting TRSMAIN, see Obtaining TRSMAIN.
A list of the components that are installed. Include details of the number of computers and their operating systems, the number of integration nodes and the computers on which they are running, and the existence and details of any user name servers.
The compressed file that is obtained by exporting your workspace and appropriate message flows and message sets. This action is done by using the IBM App Connect Toolkit.
If you are using the tagged delimited wire format on message sets, send the TDS log files.

For IBM MQ

The product version.
Any fix packs that are applied.
Any interim fixes that are applied.
All current trace and error logs, including relevant Windows Event log or Linux and UNIX operating system syslog entries and First Failure Support Technology (FFST) output files. You can find these files, which have the extension .FDC, in the errors subdirectory in the IBM MQ home directory.
Details about the IBM MQ client software, if appropriate.

For each database that you are using

The product and release level. For example, Db2® 9.1.
Any fix packs that are applied.
Any interim fixes that are applied.
All current trace and error logs, including relevant Windows Event log or Linux and UNIX operating system syslog entries. For example, the db2dialog.log file on Db2. Refer to the database product documentation for details of where to find these files.
Definitions of any database tables.
Any ODBC traces.

For the Windows operating system

The product version.
The service pack level.
The environment settings.

For the Linux and UNIX operating systems

The product version. You can find the version that is installed by using the uname -a command.
Any service level and patches that are applied.
The environment settings.

For z/OS

The product version.
The list of PTFs that are applied.
The environment settings.
The job logs from all of the address spaces.

Submit your problem to IBM Support

You can submit your problem in one of the following ways:

Online: Go to the IBM Support Guide and enter your information into the appropriate problem submission tool.
By telephone: For the telephone number to call in your country, go to the IBM Support Guide to find the telephone numbers to use to contact support for your geographic region or location. Go to the open a case from the phone section of this website.

For AIX and Linux, the IBM Support Assistant Team Server can be used to submit diagnostic documents when you have an existing support case. For more information, see the documentation for the IBM Support Assistant Team Server.

If the problem that you submit is for a software defect or for missing or inaccurate documentation, IBM Support might create an Authorized Program Analysis Report (APAR). The APAR describes the problem in detail. Whenever possible, IBM Support provides a workaround for you to implement until the APAR is resolved and a fix is delivered.

IBM publishes resolved APARs on the IBM product support web pages daily so that other users who experience the same problem can benefit from the same resolutions.