ADSM-L

Re: Return Codes

1996-12-10 13:48:45
Subject: Re: Return Codes
From: David Ong <david AT BABYONG.NSC DOT COM>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 10:48:45 -0800
Francis,
I couldn't agree with you more.

At 06:19 PM 12/10/96 +0000, you wrote:
>Dwight,
>
>I am afraid that I do not agree with your point of view, at least on UNIX
>platforms. Commands should provide meaningful return codes, for the sake of
>poor programmers that have to write scripts :-). It is then the
user/programmer
>responsibility to ignore these codes or not.
>
>For example, if one wants to use adsm to archive/retrieve files, and these
>operations need to be done as part of a batch script, one has presently a
hard
>time to trap error conditions. Certainly on our site, these can not be
ignored
>(e.g. before deleting the local copy of a file that was supposed to be
>archived, we need to make sure that no error were encountered during the
>archive processing.).
>
>On Dec 10, 11:02am, Dwight Cook wrote:
><=> Subject: Re: Return Codes
><=>     NO IT DOESN'T... BUT like you mentioned if you look in your log
><=>     (unless you are running quiet) you will see everything listed with a
><=>     status and then at the end there will be an overall condition of
><=>     completion statement...
><=>
><=>     Lots of folks have complained about this but ADSM is following the
>                                                     =====================
><=>     guidelines of all other programs basically...
>        =============================================
>
>Are you sure about this?
>
><=>     compare it to logging
><=>     onto your AIX node... you run many commands/tasks... if you run a
><=>     program that crashes would you want your logon session to report that
><=>     it failed when you logoff/exit ?  Better would be, if you were typing
><=>     90 miles an hour, hit your caplock, typed LS <ent> and the system
><=>     would come back with LS not found... one little syntax error... would
><=>     you now want misc reporting to state that your logon session was a
><=>     failure due to that ? ? ? ? ?
>
>Return codes should not be simply classified as success of failure. A simple
>method that could be used with dsmc is to provide a 0 rc if everything went
>well, 1 if warning messages  (W) have been encountered, 2 if real error
>messages (E) have been encountered. Much more elaborate schemes could be
>defined, I am sure.
>
><=>
><=>     later
><=>         Dwight
><=>
><=>
><=>
><=>______________________________ Reply Separator
>_________________________________
><=>Subject: Return Codes
><=>Author:  ADSM-L (ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU) at unix,mime
><=>Date:    12/9/96 3:32 PM
><=>
><=>
><=>Hello,
><=>
><=>Does anybody know if the AIX command line interface, dsmc, provides any
><=>kind of return code indication as to the status of a backup or archive
><=>operation? The user guide certainly doesn't contain any info on the
><=>subject. It sure would beat searching thru the redirected output of the
><=>backup/archive job for a text string containing '... ended with 0
failures'
><=> End of excerpt from Dwight Cook
>
>
>
>--
>Regards
>
>+-------------------+----------------------------------+-------------------
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>| Francis Dequenne  | Systems Section                  |      /~~\  /~~\
>| Francis Dequenne  | Systems Section                  |      /~~\  /~~\
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>

Have a nice day or whatever's left of it.

David Ong
National Semiconductor Corp.
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