Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Big Iron]

IBM has issued a flash on this subject, see
  http://www.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/FLASH10559

Bill

On Thu, 1 Mar 2007 08:17:26 -0500, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>In
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>on 02/27/2007
>   at 10:29 AM, Alan Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>
>>Early in January Russ Witt sent the list a warning about the
>>implications  apar OA17011 could have on tape retention.  We've had
>>some discussions  about this apar internally; not concerning the
>>technical impact but the  fact that there was no hold on it.  I'm
>>not suggesting that it should have  a hold
>
>Then I will; it should have a hold.
>
>>So I'm asking the group "when you're applying preventative
>>maintenance do  you read and analyze the cover information for every
>>ptf being applied?"
>
>IMHO that would be a practical impossibility. I have, however, always
>read the text of every unresolved hold, including DOC, before
>installing service.
>
>--
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
> ISO position; see 
>We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
>(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
>

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Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)]

In
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
on 02/27/2007
   at 10:29 AM, Alan Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:

>Early in January Russ Witt sent the list a warning about the
>implications  apar OA17011 could have on tape retention.  We've had
>some discussions  about this apar internally; not concerning the
>technical impact but the  fact that there was no hold on it.  I'm
>not suggesting that it should have  a hold

Then I will; it should have a hold.

>So I'm asking the group "when you're applying preventative
>maintenance do  you read and analyze the cover information for every
>ptf being applied?" 

IMHO that would be a practical impossibility. I have, however, always
read the text of every unresolved hold, including DOC, before
installing service.
 
-- 
 Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
 ISO position; see  
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Alan Schwartz]

I agree with you fully Mark.  My point was we both would have missed the 
ptf.  And for the icing on the cake the ptf (in my case UA28410) was 
superseded by another ptf (UA90306).  The newer one does have a DOC hold 
and some IPL holds but nothing in the ptf would lead you to be concerned 
about tape retention and SMS.  To protect our data centers are we forced 
to check all ptf's that apply AND all superseded ptf's?  I don't have any 
great answers, just great concerns.

Alan Schwartz
Assurant Shared Business Services




Mark Zelden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
Sent by: IBM Mainframe Discussion List 
02/27/2007 10:41 AM
Please respond to
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Subject
Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011






On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:29:05 -0600, Alan Schwartz
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>
>So I'm asking the group "when you're applying preventative maintenance do
>you read and analyze the cover information for every ptf being applied?"


Absolutely not.  If I had that much free time (or anyone else in the
group), we wouldn't be needed to begin with.   I think it's debatable
whether you need to read all ++DOC holds or not.  I personally always
have because I usually learn something (a new command or operand
to an existing command, new parmlib option, etc.).  But by definition,
doc holds should be just that - doc.  The problem is, sometimes holds
that should really be ++ACTION come in under ++DOC.   It is up to the
person / group that packages the PTF to do it correctly or if it
is a gray area they should err on the side of caution and package it
with a ++ACTION hold. 


Mark
--
Mark Zelden
Sr. Software and Systems Architect - z/OS Team Lead
Zurich North America / Farmers Insurance Group:  G-ITO
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
z/OS and OS390 expert at http://searchDataCenter.com/ateExperts/
Systems Programming expert at http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/
Mark's MVS Utilities: http://home.flash.net/~mzelden/mvsutil.html


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Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[R.S.]

Mark Zelden wrote:
[...]

IBM has been trying to make the amount of holddata you need to go through
in order to apply maintenance, less not more. For example, changing
++ACTION holds to ++IPL so you can ignore those when applying to a 
maintenance sysres that you know will be rolled out with an IPL.  So I

don't think IBM expects you to read though every PTF cover letter when
applying maintenance. 


Personally I met PTF with ++ACTION saying about some changes - in fact it was 
regular DOC!
I'm not sure, but I also vaguely remember ++DOC saying that under some circumstances IPL is needed. 
I'm used to review all the holds, although usually 99% of them can be ignored.


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Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Mark Zelden]

On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:29:05 -0600, Alan Schwartz
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>
>So I'm asking the group "when you're applying preventative maintenance do
>you read and analyze the cover information for every ptf being applied?"
>We've always looked at the hold info for all ptf's needing a bypass
>although I admit that DOC holds were not included until a year or so ago.
>Have we simply been lucky?
>

Absolutely not.  If I had that much free time (or anyone else in the
group), we wouldn't be needed to begin with.   I think it's debatable
whether you need to read all ++DOC holds or not.  I personally always
have because I usually learn something (a new command or operand
to an existing command, new parmlib option, etc.).  But by definition,
doc holds should be just that - doc.  The problem is, sometimes holds
that should really be ++ACTION come in under ++DOC.   It is up to the
person / group that packages the PTF to do it correctly or if it
is a gray area they should err on the side of caution and package it
with a ++ACTION hold.  

IBM has been trying to make the amount of holddata you need to go through
in order to apply maintenance, less not more. For example, changing
++ACTION holds to ++IPL so you can ignore those when applying to a 
maintenance sysres that you know will be rolled out with an IPL.  So I
don't think IBM expects you to read though every PTF cover letter when
applying maintenance. 

My 2 cents.

Mark
--
Mark Zelden
Sr. Software and Systems Architect - z/OS Team Lead
Zurich North America / Farmers Insurance Group:  G-ITO
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
z/OS and OS390 expert at http://searchDataCenter.com/ateExperts/
Systems Programming expert at http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/
Mark's MVS Utilities: http://home.flash.net/~mzelden/mvsutil.html

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Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Alan Schwartz]

Early in January Russ Witt sent the list a warning about the implications 
apar OA17011 could have on tape retention.  We've had some discussions 
about this apar internally; not concerning the technical impact but the 
fact that there was no hold on it.  I'm not suggesting that it should have 
a hold but that, perhaps because of our methodology, if it weren't for 
Russ' warning  we wouldn't have known about it. 

So I'm asking the group "when you're applying preventative maintenance do 
you read and analyze the cover information for every ptf being applied?" 
We've always looked at the hold info for all ptf's needing a bypass 
although I admit that DOC holds were not included until a year or so ago. 
Have we simply been lucky?

Just curious.

Alan Schwartz
Assurant Shared Business Services

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Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Mike Wood]

I have sent a feedback to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to get the book corrected 
next time it is updated.

Mike Wood   RMM Development

On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 06:04:39 -0600, Steve O'Connell 
 wrote:


>Incidentally, the IBM Redbook Enterprise Tape A Practical Guide I have
>says :
>
>Since no management class attributes are available for tape cartridges,
>defining management classes is optional and not recommended.
>
>Regards,
> Steve O.


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Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Russell Witt]

Kees,

You are correct, guess I didn't explain that correctly. If you have a tape
management system AND all your tapes are protected by rules defined within
the tape management system then you are safe. However, if some of your tape
files have their retention controlled by what is in the JCL then you at
risk.

It is documented that if you do not want a maximum retention enforced to
specify NOLIMIT, so that has not changed. It is just that enforcement is
just now being performed.

Russell Witt
CA-1 Level-2 Support Manager

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Behalf Of Vernooy, C.P. - SPLXM
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 6:19 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011


..

I had to read Russel's text several time until I saw what he meant (I
hope).

He said, spread over several sentences:
If you have an tape management system AND you have a parameter file
(CA-1 RDS, etc.) that determines the expiration of tapes THEN nothing
changes with the PTF and you are safe.

In all other circumstances, your expiration processing might change.

Kees.

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Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Vernooy, C.P. - SPLXM]

""Steve O'Connell""  wrote in message
news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> Russel,
> can you clarify something for me please?
> Your sig states that you support CA-1, and in your post you say that
folks 
> running a tape management system (including CA-1) are safe, but you go
on 
> to say that you have 2 clients (by deduction CA-1 customers?) who have

> lost data as a result of this issue.
> How did this occur?

I had to read Russel's text several time until I saw what he meant (I
hope).

He said, spread over several sentences:
If you have an tape management system AND you have a parameter file
(CA-1 RDS, etc.) that determines the expiration of tapes THEN nothing
changes with the PTF and you are safe.

In all other circumstances, your expiration processing might change.

Kees.


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Re: Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Steve O'Connell]

Russel,
can you clarify something for me please?
Your sig states that you support CA-1, and in your post you say that folks 
running a tape management system (including CA-1) are safe, but you go on 
to say that you have 2 clients (by deduction CA-1 customers?) who have 
lost data as a result of this issue.
How did this occur?

I took a look at our SMS managed tape setup and see that we don't pass a 
management class to tape datasets, and in fact the ACS routines set 
management class to NULL so I guess we are safe anyhow.
Incidentally, the IBM Redbook Enterprise Tape A Practical Guide I have 
says :

Since no management class attributes are available for tape cartridges, 
defining management classes is optional and not recommended.

Regards,
 Steve O.

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Warning on IBM APAR OA17011

[Russell Witt]

I wanted to give a warning regarding APAR OA17011 (closed, with published
PTF's available). There has been a "hole" in IBM SMS Managed Tape for a long
time (day-1 possibly), were the "Retention Limit" value in the Management
Class was not enforced. So, if the Retention Limit was 0 and the JCL said
RETPD=10; it was allowed to have a 10-day retention. With OA17011, this hole
has been closed and the "Retention Limit" value is now enforced. This means,
if someone has a Retention Limit of 0 (instead of "NOLIMIT") and they create
a tape file with a RETPD=10 or EXPDT=99365 (think HSM) the actual JFCB
expiration date (and the date put into HDR1) will be zero as if no
expiration date had been specified at all.

If you have a tape management system (who doesn't), and the tape management
system has some retention rules (RDS for CA-1, RMF for TLMS, Vital Records
for DFSMSrmm); those will override and you will be safe. However, if you
have tape datasets that are SMS managed AND you do not override ALL JCL
specified retention values with rules, I would suggest you review your
Management Class definitions and make sure you do not have any Retention
Limit values that might have a negative impact.

I have had at least 2 clients lose many tapes (early expiration date means
early scratch) because of this.

Russell Witt
CA-1 Level-2 Support Manager

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