Obtaining an SMS Trace During DFSMSdss Processing

Answer

• • • Description:
      
      There are a variety of situations that require a trace of SMS processing to assist in the debug or diagnosis of the results when SMS is invoked by DFSMSdss. Some of these situations are incorrect/insufficient space attempting to allocate a data set, unexpected errors from SMS, or incorrect/unexpected volume selection following an SMS allocation. To determine the cause of these results, it may be necessary to invoke SMS trace processing. This process is usually done by the SMS support folks, but can be initiated anytime if necessary. This item is written to explain from a DSS perspective how to obtain this trace. These are the steps to follow to obtain an SMS trace:
      
      1. Issue SETSMS SIZE,(0) ===> This will clear out anything currently in the trace space
      2. SETSMS TRACE(ON),TYPE(ALL),SIZE(200M),DESELECT(ALL), SELECT(ACSINT,ACSPRO,VTOCA,VTOCC,IDAX,CATG,MSG,MODULE),JOBNAME(jobname)
      In this command, the pertinent information is:
      DESELECT(ALL) ===> This turns off any current trace settings
      SELECT - MSG ===> This traces the IGDxxxxx messages
      VTOCC ===> This traces the data set CREATE path (the SSSAE type request for new allocation)
      VTOCA ===> This traces any data set EXTEND processing
      MODULE ===> This traces the flow of the SMS modules, this does produce more output.
      Other options for trace selections are ACSINT for tracing the ACERO input variables and ACSPRO for tracing the processing through the ACS routines
      3. Submit the job to be traced
      4. Turn off the trace by issuing SETSMS TRACE(OFF)
      5. Take a dump of the SMS address space. An example follows using MVS commands.
      DUMP COMM=(any dump title you desire)
      R #,JOBNAME=SMS,CONT
      R #,SDATA=(LPA,CSA,ALLNUC,GRSQ,LSQA,SWA,PSA,SQA,TRT,
      RGN,SUM)
      6. Activate IPCS from a TSO session
      7. Choose option 0 for setting up the Defaults
      8. Go to the Command Option (usually option 6 from the main panel)
      9. Issue the following command: VERBX SMSDATA 'TRACE'
      
      It will most likely be helpful to take a DSS dump simultaneously. To do this, you will want to set the DSS PARM='SDUMP=xxx' where the xxx are the numeric values in a DSS message usually either an ADR709E if the job is reporting errors or ADR711I if the allocation is 'successful' but the results are not what was expected. The output will be 2 SVC dumps one from the SDUMP and one from the Dump command in step 5 above that will contain the SMS trace information.
      
      This information, as well as additional SMS-related information, can be found in informational APAR II08004.
      
      
      Resolution:
      
      This will create SMS trace data to assist in debugging the problem.