RE: "Undead" Jobs

We had one of these "Undead" jobs on January 1st. Same thing-- we were running the "shutdown" procedure for an application, but one job would not end; couldn't end it *IMMED or ABNormal. Tried the "ENDSBS" trick (of course it didn't work).

We were at cume level 0215 and java group, SF99562 was at level 13, only 1 behind. The initial thread of the job was in thdw status and the 2 secondary threads seem to be looping in JAVA code. System monitor was full of the 2 secondary threads. There was nothing in the call stack.

Because it was New Year's Day, and only one user was on the system, we decided to take a Main Storage Dump and IPL. The one user had a 'communication problem,' we took the dump and shipped everything off to IBM.

Conclusion was that the application JAVA code was looping; we contacted the application vendor and they recommended doing a "hard stop" for the application instead of the "soft stop" we were previously told to use ("hard stop" being recommended on the iSeries. Now they tell us.).

Problem hasn't come back... [energetic sound of knocking on wood] But just last week we loaded the latest PTFs-- still 0215, but all the groups have been updated. Just in case.

Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Åke Olsson
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 2:24 AM
To: (midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Subject: "Undead" Jobs

On a few occasions we have seen this happening in a batch subsystem (one of many sbs on machine):


A job starts using way to much resources and needs to be put out of its misery.
We try killing the job *immed.
It still stays on - forever - using up constantly around 30% of the CPU on A 570 box.
Trying to use endjobabn does not help.
The subsystem cannot be stopped.
The "undead" job cannot be held or changed in any other way.

One peculiar thing about these "undead" jobs is that they show no program stack despite the fact that they use both i/o (loads of open files) and CPU.

The only solution seems to be to IPL the system, which is highly impopular with the users.

The box is on V6R1. As for PTF level I do not know. I simply assume that the sysadmins do their job with regards to installing critical and cum ptf:s.

Any ideas? Does this ring a bell?

Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards

Åke H Olsson
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