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CICS hanging during startup after AEY7 abend in CONL when running with CA Top Secret

Question & Answer


Question

After upgrading a number of CICS regions from CICS Transaction Server for z/OS (CICS TS) version 5.2 to 5.4, two regions experienced an abend AEY7 in transaction CONL at startup during MAS initialization. After the abend the regions no longer continue with initialization and the regions hang. These are the last messages I see in the CICS log:

 07.00.54 +EYUNX0001I CICSRGN1 LMAS initialization program starting      
 07.00.54 +EYUXL0003I CICSRGN1 CPSM Version 540  LMAS startup in progress
 07.00.54 +EYUXL0119I CICSRGN1 CPSM Kernel loaded from EYU9XL01          
 07.00.54 +EYUXL0900I   Starting Environment Recovery 
 07.00.54 +EYUXL0905E CICSRGN1 AEY7 IN XLBE, OFFSET ????????             
 PSW=00000000 00000000 LEVEL=JCI710M PFX=EYU                             
 07.00.54 +EYUXL0905E INTC=0000 ILC=0 TXCP=00000000 SCODE=S????          
 TRAN=CONL TASK=0000030                                                  
 07.00.54 +EYUXL0905E Methods=XLEV  

With the switch in CICS TS 5.4 from PLTPI user ID to region ID, there was some entitlements missing in the region ID causing a NOTAUTH in CONL with abend AEY7 followed by abend EYUK.

MASPLT=YES and it has a wait time of 10 minutes.

I took a dump during the hang and saw the following in the dispatcher domain (DS=1):

 Resource Resource           Time Of      Timeout Task      
 Type     Name             W Suspend      Due     Num   Tran
          DMWTQUEU         S 21:38:07.377                   
          DMWTQUEU         S 21:38:07.346                   
          DMWTQUEU         S 21:38:06.791                   
                           M 21:38:19.402      -  00009 CPLT
 AP_INIT  SIPDMTEC         M 21:38:08.179      -            
 DFHSIPLT LATE_PLT         M 21:38:18.653      -  00011 CSSY
 SODOMAIN SO_LISTN         M 21:38:07.954      -  00005 CSOL
 TCP_NORM DFHZDSP          W 21:38:31.034      -  00010 CSTP

I changed our CA Top Secret SPI definition to SPI=JESSPOOL and this got us around the problem.

Answer

An AEY7 abend indicates a NOTAUTH condition not handled. I've seen the same kind of problem the past and the abend indicated that JES spool data sets were protected with profiles in the JESSPOOL class. The problem was resolved when the region userid was authorized for this class. So the SPI=JESSPOOL in Top Secret settings seems to have done this for you.

All the entries of DMWTQUEU are for CICS domains that are trying to initialize but cannot because of the AP DOMAIN has not finished initializing (I can see the AP_INIT) suspend.

A Resource Name of SIPDMTEC is used out of DFHAPSIP, when CICS is waiting for a POST from the TCP task. This means CICS is waiting for the TCP task to complete its job before continueing.

The main thing that caught my attention in that output from the DS domain is the DFHSIPLT suspend, especially based on the background of this problem and the mention of PLTPI. This suspend means the initialization task (III) is waiting for the CPLT task to complete. From my research, this can be related to CICSPlex SM (CPSM) parameters MASPLTWAIT or MASINITTIME.

There is a known problem where CA Technology code has front ended the a SPOOLOPEN performed by EYU9XLBE. This ends up causing a NOTAUTH (AEY7) condition and the task abends and the MAS initialization is stopped. CA Top Secret created fix is ST08164 for program CAKSXCMD for this problem, in order to prevent the AEY7 abend from occurring. If this abend had not occurred then the CONL task would not have gone away and the region would not have hung during initialization. Please contact CA Technologies if you need more assistance.

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Product Synonym

CICS/TS CICSTS CICS TS CICS Transaction Server

Document Information

Modified date:
01 July 2019

UID

dwa1507713