The first things to look at are any messages accompanying the abend, the exception trace entry in the internal trace table, and the symptom string at the start of the dump.
Any messages that accompany a CICS® system abend can sometimes point directly to the cause of the failure. For every case, advice about how to react to a message is given in CICS Messages and Codes.
When a CICS system abend occurs, an exception trace entry is made to the internal trace table and any other active trace destination. It does not matter whether you have tracing turned on or not--the trace entry is still made.
If the trace table contains more than one exception trace entry, it is likely that the last one is associated with the dump. However, this might not always be the case, and you should make sure that you have found the correct entry. Be aware, too, that dumps can sometimes be requested without a corresponding exception trace entry being made.
The exception trace entry gives information about what was happening when the failure occurred, and data that was being used at the time.
For details of trace entries, see Using traces in problem determination.
The symptom string in a system dump is similar to the short symptom string at the beginning of a CICS transaction dump.
The symptom string:
The symptom string provides a number of keywords that can be directly typed into RETAIN® and used to search the RETAIN database. The possible keywords are shown in Table 2. The keywords are used at the IBM® Support Center to discover duplicate problems, or problems that have already been reported by other users and for which a solution is available.
If you have the IBM INFORMATION/ACCESS licensed program, 5665-266, you can search the RETAIN database yourself.
If you report a problem to the IBM Support Center, you are often asked to quote the symptom string.
Keyword | Meaning |
---|---|
PIDS/ | Product ID (CICS product number) |
LVLS/ | Level indicator (CICS release level) |
RIDS/ | Module name |
PTFS/ | Module PTF level |
MS/ | Message ID reporting error |
AB/ | Abend code |
ADRS/ | Address or offset indicator |
PRCS/ | Return code |
PCSS/ | CICS jobname |
OVS/ | Overlaid storage |
FLDS/ | Name of a field associated with problem |
REGS/ | Software register associated with problem |
VALU/ | Value of a named field or register |
Although the symptom string is designed to provide keywords for searching the RETAIN database, it can also give you significant information about what was happening at the time the error occurred, and it might suggest an obvious cause or a likely area in which to start your investigation. Amongst other things, it might contain the abend code. If you have not already done so, look in CICS Messages and Codes to see what action it suggests for this abend code.
If the system is unable to gather much information about the error, the symptom string is less specific. In such cases, it might not help you much with problem determination, and you need to look at other parts of the dump. The kernel domain storage summary is a good place to start.