November 1997 Newsletter IOFTech    Maintenance   Release8G       Newsletters    Doc    FAQ    Contact    Home

IOF 7D Status

The third and hopefully last beta version of IOF 7D was shipped on November 6. If everything goes as planned, this version with minimal changes will become 7D. Although no firm date has been set for general availability of 7D, it should be released in early December unless unforeseen problems are encountered.

Operlog Support

The newest beta version includes support for the sysplex operlog facility. The IOF OPERLOG facility formats and displays the sysplex operlog exactly like SYSLOG. The only difference from the user's perspective is that OPERLOG displays the combined log from all systems in the sysplex in a single log.

A new SLAMOPER clist is provided in the beta release to build an index to OPERLOG. The OPERLOG indices are identical to the SYSLOG indices built by SLAMRUN. This is possible because the SYSLOG and OPERLOG formats displayed by IOF are identical. Each minute of the day and important system messages are indexed in OPERLOG for quick and easy access.

In order to provide a smooth migration, we recommend that you initially use both SYSLOG and OPERLOG. In fact, this may be a good permanent procedure. You can continue to run SLAMRUN on each system in the sysplex to index each system log. To build the index for the combined OPERLOG, run SLAMOPER on any system in the sysplex.

To view the log under IOF:

     L           SYSLOG for your curent system

     L sysid     SYSLOG for another sysid

     L O         Combined OPERLOG

The "L" command thus can be used to browse either SYSLOG or OPERLOG. Once in browse, the INDEX command displays the same list of IOF indices for both log types. The difference is that the OPERLOG index contains entries merged from all systems in the sysplex.

Archiving the OPERLOG

We are currently developing procedures to automatically capture and archive copies of the OPERLOG and to remove old OPERLOG records. These procedures are not included in the current beta version, but may be in the initial 7D release of IOF. Otherwise, the required clists and/or code will be downloadable from this web site when available.

Beta Test Sites

We can still use a few beta test sites. We especially need sysplex sites running with the coupling facility to exercise the new OPERLOG function. The beta version is available to any licensed site, and can be ordered by clicking here.