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Why do I get CTG6876E with EXCI reason 201 when connecting to CICS TS?

Question & Answer


Question

I have an EXCI connection from CICS TG to a CICS server. When the gateway starts up I sometimes see

  CTG6876E EXCI error. Function Call = 1, Response = 8, EXCI Reason = 201,
  Subreason field-1 = 0x00, subreason field-2 = 0x00, ctg_rc=-3.

After that the gateway shuts down. Why is this happening and how can I fix it?

Answer

The CICS External Interfaces Guide explains whan an EXCI says for a 201:

  201 NO_CICS_IRC_STARTED
  Explanation: An Initialize_User command has been issued on an MVS
  image that has had no IRC activity since the previous IPL, and the
  external CICS interface cannot determine the CICS SVC number.

In other words, there is no CICS registered with MVS, so that when CICS TG starts it is unable to find the connection and so can not complete its initialization process.

Solution

Usually, this is a case where CICS TG has started before the CICS region. If that is not the case then issuing a CEMT INQ IRC will show if IRC is set to open. If not, it can be changed at that panel. Customers should also verify that IRCSTART=YES is specified in SYSIN.

As noted above, most instances of this error occur when CICS TG is started before CICS TS. If so, the situation can be resolved in three ways:

1) In the short term, you could start a dummy CICS job then shut it down before CICS TG is started. This will let the EXCI batch job run successfully until the next IPL. The downside to this would be that you would have to start this dummy job after every IPL.

2) A better option is to customize the DFHXCOPT EXCI options table and point the CICSSVC parameter to the proper IRC number.

The CICSSVC parm defaults to zero, which tells EXCI to do a lookup of MVS to obtain the IRC. This lookup will fail if no CICS region has registered with MVS.

To avoid this you can use the DFHXCO macro to set the CICSSVC variable to the IRC that CICS will use when it starts. The default value for the IRC is 216, so most customers set that value. Once assembled and placed in the STEPLIB of the gateway's batch job, the lookup will no longer fail, and the gateway will be able to start prior to the CICS region without encountering the CTG6876E.

3) A third alternative is to configure only IPIC connections. If that is the case you would then need to disable EXCI by setting in STDENV:

CTG_EXCI_INIT = NO

After that the gateway won't do a lookup of the IRC at startup.

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Product Synonym

CICSTG CICS TG

Document Information

Modified date:
23 January 2015

UID

dwa1167359