ADSM-L

Background process monitoring

1997-07-17 11:14:31
Subject: Background process monitoring
From: Tom Denier <tom AT STAFF.UDC.UPENN DOT EDU>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 11:14:31 -0400
Like a number of other subscribers to this list, I have a need to run a
series of ADSM server commands in succession, with some of the commands
starting background processess. I wrote a script to handle the general
problem of executing a command that starts a background process and
waiting for the background process to start. When I first did this
I discovered that all of the commands I was interested in generated
ANR messages that ended 'started as process nnn.' I wrote a somewhat
convaluted awk script to extract process numbers from such messages.

I recently decided to add 'expire inventory' to the set of commands
executed sequentially. I checked my activity log and discovered that
previous 'expire inventory' commands had generated ANR messages ending
with 'started as process nnn.' I confidently set up my general purpose
script to run 'expire inventory' and wait for the resulting background
process to complete. The script reported that the background process
had failed to start. I eventually used an UNIX tee command to write
the output of the dsmadmc command to a file, and discovered that the
message ending in 'started as process nnn.' was not included in the
output from dsmadmc. However, I discovered the following ANS message
in the dsmadmc output: 'ANS5104I Process number nnn started.' I
changed my script to take advantage of this message. The next time
I attempted to run the sequence of ADSM commands my script reported
that the background process for 'backup db' had failed to start. It
turns out that dsmadmc does not produce an ANS5104 message when used
to execute a 'backup db' command, but does produce such a message
when used to execute a 'backup stgpool' or 'expire inventory' command.

It would seem that the ADSM developers have introduced not one but
two totally gratuitous inconsistencies in the treatment of messages
reporting the starting of background processes, and that the combined
effect of the two inconsistencies is to preclude any uniform approach
to capturing the background process number.

I don't think there is any real possibility of getting this fixed
through the APAR process. I have not been able to find any documentation
explaining in detail how background process start-up is supposed to
work. This shields the developers from complaints that background
process start-up is not working the way it is supposed to. Do I have
any other recourse?
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