RE: Newbie Question

It's there. You can have the system email you on such conditions if you
like. Or text you. It won't do it by default, though. You have to set up
the alerts. Google "iseries alerts".

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stephen Cochran
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 12:25 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Newbie Question

I understand the risks, and this is somewhat a temporary solution (the
old way was having an over-dedicated person without sysadmin experience
who just manually monitored everything).

Since the output is moving to a linux box, I'm not relying on the exact
position of any particular string, just grepping for keys (MSGW, PROG1,
etc). If those are found/not found as each warrants, then we send an
email to warn us to check into things.

I'm sure it's my own ignorance, but I find it very surprising that a
system heralded for it's stability lacks the built-in ability to
monitor/notify on conditions like MSGW which can completely block
functionality.

Steve


On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Scott Klement
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Stephen,

Spooled output (e.g. OUTPUT(*PRINT)) is not designed for a program to
consume. It's designed to be printed output for a human being to

read.

IBM is perfectly able to change the layout of WRKACTJOB's
OUTPUT(*PRINT) at any release, or even PTF, without providing any sort

of notification to people. They can change it around as much as they
like, because it's intended to be read by a human-being, and that
won't hurt a human being! People can adapt easily to text being in a
different place on a page.

Therefore I advise caution in your project. If your goal is simply to

take the spooled output and display it (without modification) to the
user, then WRKACTJOB OUTPUT(*PRINT) is okay.

But, if you plan to parse the output and use it programatically,
PLEASE think twice before using OUTPUT(*PRINT). Use an API, that's
what they're for. The API will perform better, and it will give you
data that's not going to break when releases change, PTFs are applied,

or anything like that.

Or, in the very very very unusual event that compatibility is broken
in an API, they'll provide notice of this in the Memo To Users and you

will be aware of the problem and can fix it before it causes grief.




Stephen Cochran wrote:

Preface to say that I'm very new to the as400, stronger unix

background.

I'm trying to write a small CL program that puts the output of
WRKACTJOB into a PC file so that it can be FTPed off the as400,
ideally having the

CL

program executed by the FTP script using RMCD. I have the basics
down as shown below:

WRKACTJOB OUTPUT(*PRINT)

/* Delay for 2 seconds for output to finish */
DLYJOB DLY(3)

/* Copy spool output to file KAF/WAJFILE */
CPYSPLF FILE(QPDSPAJB) TOFILE(KAF/WAJFILE) +
JOB(419900/USER/QPRTJOB) SPLNBR(*LAST)

DLTSPLF FILE(QPDSPAJB) JOB(419900/USER/QPRTJOB)

This will sometimes work, and sometimes not ending with a CPF3343

message. I

have tried ending a MONMSG line to catch those, but even putting a

DLTSPLF

command in the MONMSG ends with the same error.

At this point I've tried just about every combination of options
(using

the

job name for JOB parameter, using SMBJOB for the WRKACTJOB command,
etc)

but

always run into some problem.

So my question is, what's the correct way to accomplish this? Being

somewhat

new, code examples are always welcome. Thanks.

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