I sent this to one of our account CEs. I'm posting it as a brain teaser/anecdote more than for help. Enjoy.
Hey, Tom, I'm sorry to email this to you, but I'm not sure how to call the Support Center about it. Tell me what you think I should do. Yesterday morning around 5:00 AM SOMETHING unusual was going on with C81 which was being used by the DOSVSE (VSE/ESA 2.2) virtual machine for DASD backups. The VSE log after 4:58 was lost, so I'm not clear on what Ops experienced. The VM (VM/ESA 2.2) console log shows the following: 05:02:30 Q C81 05:02:30 TAPE 0C81 ATTACHED TO DOSVSE 0C81 R/W 05:02:54 DET C81 DOSVSE 05:03:04 HCPDTR1120E The requested DETACH for device 0C81 did not complete in the allotted time. 05:03:15 VARY OFFLINE C81 05:03:15 HCPCPN140E Tape 0C81 attached to DOSVSE 05:03:15 1 device(s) specified; 0 device(s) successfully varied offline NETVIEW : IST574E START I/O TIMEOUT OCCURRED FOR VSELINE NETVIEW : CNM039I AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE HAS BEEN LOGGED - PLEASE BROWSE THE NETVIEW LOG 05:04:11 HCPDPM1283I Path 20 to device 0C81 currently not responding 05:04:11 HCPMHT2153I TAPE 0C81 I/O CANCELLED DUE TO A MISSING INTERRUPT Essentially it appears the failed VARY OFF of the drive, while still ATTACHed to the VSE system (presumably not DVCDNed and perhaps in an I/O pending state) and following a failed DETACH attempt, MAY have spawned SOMETHING in the 7060 that induced communications issues between VM and VSE VTAM as well as missing interrupt detections on the tape drive. Fortunately I was almost at work anyway when Ops called me, so they stood by until I could arrive to assess the situation. They had already attempted to FORCE off the DOSVSE virtual machine which resulted in it being placed in a zombie state, so I just reIPLed VM at 5:30. This cleared the MIH issue but the VTAMs were unable to reinitialize the SNA elements in the Microsoft HIS servers. As we have found in the past POR is the only solution to this, I gracefully quiesced the VSE system, shutdown VM again (no reIPL this time), deactivated the 7060 (Basic mode, no LPARs) via the Support Element, ran the POR, and activated the 7060, resulting in a normal IPL of VM et al, and nothing out of the ordinary has since been observed. All the Support Element shows are two Channel Problems (I deleted the Disabled Wait record) and the HMC did not phone home. I have EREP SYSUM, EVENT, and PRINT=PS listings ready to attach to an email as well as the VM and VSE logs (such as the VSE log is). I know you're familiar with the odd issues we've been having with those drives and/or CUs, so I won't go into that. You know, it would be really great if I could just email this message directly to the Support Center to open an incident. Perhaps you could suggest to the right person that IBM make this sort of approach possible (or point me to him or her, if necessary--I know customers are louder than IBMers sometimes). -- May the LORD God bless you exceedingly abundantly! Dave Craig - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "'So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.'" --from _Nightfall_ by Asimov/Silverberg
