QMGTOOLS: Hardware Data Collection

Step 1

Obtain and install a copy of QMGTOOLS library from IBM. Follow the links below for instructions.
MustGather: How to obtain and Install QMGTOOLS and keep it current

Step 2

Once installed, add QMGTOOLS to your library list via ADDLIBLE command. Run command GO MG to bring up the QMGTOOLS main menu.
In the example, option 19 is the Hardware data collection menu. Take that option.

Step 3

The Hardware data collection menu has these options (as more menu options are added, this document will reflect the changes).

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This option collects a mini snapshot. Data collected are :

Hardware configuration rack
PAL entries
PTF listing
SID87 if PAL selected
VLOG entries

Once the data is collected, the user will be presented with a screen like this :

Enter the Salesforce case number and hit F1 to continue to upload data to IBM.

If the upload is successful, a job would be submitted to batch to perform the upload.
Additional information about the FTP function can be found at this link QMGTOOLS: FTP Data to IBM

Note: If this process fails, follow the instructions later in this document to use other methods of uploading data to IBM.
Also note the file on this screen to be use later for upload.

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Collect DASD information collects data for DASD issues. It collects these information :

DSMINFO AA macro
FABQUERY AA macro
IODD ALLOBJECTS AA macro
IOHRIDEBUG AA macro
LEVELOFPROTECTION AA macro
PAL entries
PEL (persistent error log)
PTF listing
Rack config
SERVICEDOCS AA macro
SID87 if PAL selected

Note: This process uses a virtual device to sign onto the system as if it was a user. Once signed on, it goes into SST and runs the necessary commands to dump the data. There may be issues if the system is in restricted a state where no new sessions are allowed. Other issues may occur if the system has a unique sign on method such as two factor authentication.

OS400 user ID/password - credentials for sign on
SST user ID/password - SST credentials for SST
Virtual device - Refer to note in this section
*STORED password - this if OS400 and SST credentials are stored in a data area (data is encrypted) and the name of the data area in library QMGTOOLS.
>Refer to the option "Setup Stored Credentials For Batch Operations"
PAL information - Y/N to collect PAL entries
Begin/End date - if collecting PAL entries, specify begin and end date
FABQUERY AA cmd - specify up to 4 storage IOAs to collect (resource DCxx)
Collect PEL - specify up to 4 storage IOAs to collect PEL (resource DCxx)

Once the data is collected, the user will be presented with a screen like this (if the option FTP data to IBM was set to Y):

Enter the Salesforce case number and hit F1 to continue to upload data to IBM.

If the upload is successful, a job would be submitted to batch to perform the upload.
Additional information about the FTP function can be found at this link QMGTOOLS: FTP Data to IBM

Note: If this process fails, follow the instructions later in this document to use other methods of uploading data to IBM. Also note the file on this screen to be use later for upload.

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Collect com data option collects communication hardware data. It collects these :

ALTSTACK AA macro
HEAFR AA macro
IOFR AA macro
PAL entries
Rack config
SERVICEDOCS AA macro
SID87 if PAL selected
VIOFR AA macro
VLOG entries

Note: This process uses a virtual device to sign onto the system as if it was a user. Once signed on, it goes into SST and runs the necessary
commands to dump the data. There may be issues if the system is in restricted a state where no new sessions are allowed. Other issues may occur
if the system has a unique sign on method such as two factor authentication.

OS400 user ID/password - credentials for sign on
SST user ID/password - SST credentials for SST
Virtual device - refer to note in this section
*STORED password - this if OS400 and SST credentials are stored in a data area (data is encrypted) and the name of the data area in library QMGTOOLS. Refer to the option "Setup Stored Credentials For Batch Operations"
PAL information - Y/N to collect PAL entries
VLOG information - Y/N to collect VLOG entries
Begin/End date - if collecting PAL or VLOG entries, specify begin and end date

Once the data is collected, the user will be presented with a screen like this (if FTP data to IBM was set to Y):

Enter the Salesforce case number and hit F1 to continue to upload data to IBM.
If the upload is successful, a job would be submitted to batch to perform the upload. Additional information about the FTP function can be found
at this link QMGTOOLS: FTP Data to IBM

Note: If this process fails, follow the instructions later in this document to use other methods of uploading data to IBM. Also note the file on this screen to be use later for upload.

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Collect VPD information
PTF listing
Rack config
IOHRIBADVPD -GA2 -ALL AA macro

OS400 user ID/password - OS/400 signon credentials
SST user ID/pass - SST credentials
*STORED password - this if OS400 and SST credentials are stored in a data area (data is encrypted) and the name of the data area in library
QMGTOOLS. Refer to the option "Setup Stored Credentials For Batch Operations"

FTP data to IBM - choose this option if you want to upload the data to IBM

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Collects the Service Action Logs

If an SALs are found, a spoolfile, QSYSPRT, will be created.

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This option provides an easy way to generate a hardware rack configuration sorted by logical address. It uses an AA macro to grab the data.

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This tool compares a list of serial numbers of hardware on the system that matches an ECA (engineering change announcement) file.
This would be used under the direction of IBM support.

 

How to collect data for ECA - *AUTO (QMGTOOLS tries to automatically collect the data necessary to compare against the ECA) , this is the default

ECA number - number that will be given by IBM support

After the ECA number is entered, a screen like below is presented.

Signon user ID/pass/verify password - OS/400 signon STT user ID/pass/verify password - SST signon

The program tries to create a virtual terminal session to the system and sign on to SST. It will then try to dump the necessary data to compare against the ECA.

If this process fails, you will be notified with a message to manually collect the data (a spoolfile) to be used for the ECA compare. Option 18 Compare ECA from spoolfile is used to manually compare.

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In a previous method, the ECA Identification Tool failed to grab the necessary data to do the ECA compare.
Once that failed, a screen should have been shown to the user to tell her/him what to collect manually. That data should have been dump to a spoolfile.

How to collect data for ECA - This just tells the tool that we are manually selecting a spoolfile to be used for the ECA compare

ECA number - the ECA number

After the ECA is entered, you will be presented with a screen indicating what needed to be collected manually. After that screen, you will be prompted with a screen like below.

Here we are going to search for the spoolfile that was created so we can do the compare. Assumption is the current user was the one that generated the spoolfile.

Note that the user is not the user profile that was used to sign onto SST.

Select the spoolfile with a '1' for the ECA. You can use '5' to display to make sure that spoofile is the correct one.

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Each time a collection is done, an IBMDATA*.zip file is stored in /tmp. This just deletes those files for clean up purposes.

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This option allows the user to store OS400/SST credentials into a data area so that some operations in this menu can be run in batch. Contents in the data area is encrypted and will be located in library QMGTOOLS.

Signon user ID/pass - credentials for the OS sign on
SST user ID/pass - credentials for SST
Data area prefix - the data area to store the information, this data area will be in library QMGTOOLS

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This is a post processing command where after the system's PAL are dump and copied to a physical file, a user can strip out unwanted SRCs from the PAL. Normally this is done to make the PAL more manageable.

File/Library/Member - the location of the PAL member
SRC number - up to 4 SRC numbers can be specified to omit
Output - *PRINT, *OUTFILE (either create a spoolfile or dump the data into a new file

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The following link provides different methods to send the data to IBM.

MustGather: Instructions for Sending Data to IBM i Support

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