I got this trying to start my z/VM system.

The books talk about editing and changing/etc/sysctl.conf.  I just changed my *.devmap and reduced the size of the memory in the

[system]
memory 3G

statements

I found it hard to find information about MQ events and what to do with them, so Ive documented my thoughts below.

Thanks to Gwydion and Morag for the many corrections!

MQ writes messages to system queues when specific activities occur, for example when a channel is made put(disabled) or a channel stops.  This allows you to have a program take these and take actions.

Ive categorised the actions into

• When
  • Now – for example queue full – needs to be actioned today(now!)
  • Tomorrow – for example a configuration error – raise a change ticket and get it fixed
• Who
  • Operations
  • System administrators – who define objects
  • Application programmers – responsible for application queues

Different queues are used depending on the event

Useful links

• List of events in the MQ V9 knowledge center
• List of event types in Queue manager events 

• Alias Base Queue Type Error
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who –  sysadmin
  • Action – fix the configuration problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  LOCALEV
• Bridge Started  IMS bridge
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – operations
  • Action – ignore
  • Switch – alter qmgr  BRIDGEEV
• Bridge Stopped
  • When – now
  • Who – operations
  • Action – check to see why it was stopped
  • Switch – alter qmgr  BRIDGEEV
• Change Authority Record
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action – check if this was made by and authorised person.  Keep a copy for audit purposes
  • Switch – alter qmgr CONFIGEV
• Change object
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action – check if this was made by and authorised person.  Keep a copy for audit purposes
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CONFIGEV
• Channel Activated
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – operations
  • Action – check if this was made by and authorised person.
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CHLEV
• Channel Auto-definition Error
  • When – now
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action –  determine why the definition failed
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CHADEV
• Channel Auto-definition OK
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action –  check to ensure this was expected
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CHADEV
• Channel Blocked
  • When – now
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action –  find out why this is blocked.  Is it  a new unexpected channel?
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CHLEV
• Channel Conversion Error
  • When – now
  • Who – application programmers and sys admins
  • Action – find out why the messages cannot be processed.  It may be an application error.   The sys admins may need to be involved to get information about the target queue
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CHLEV
• Channel Not Activated
  • When – now
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action –  find out what the problem is
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CHLEV
• Channel Not Available
  • When – now
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action –  find out what the problem is
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CHLEV
• Channel SSL Error
  • When – now
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action –  find out what the problem is
  • Switch – alter qmgr SSLEV
• Channel SSL Warning
  • When – now
  • Who – sys admins
  • Action –  find out what the problem is
  • Switch – alter qmgr SSLEV
• Channel Started
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – operations
  • Action –  none
  • Switch – alter qmgr CHLEV
• Channel Stopped
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – operations
  • Action – depends.  This could be expected or unexpected
  • Switch – alter qmgr CHLEV
• Channel Stopped By User
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – operations
  • Action – depends.  This could be expected or unexpected
  • Switch – alter qmgr CHLEV
• Command
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – review command issues.  Save the information for audit, or recreate purposes
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CMDEV
• Create object
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – review command issues.  Save the information for audit, or recreate purposes
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CONFIGEV
• Default Transmission Queue Type Error
  • When – now
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – fix the problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV
• Default Transmission Queue Usage Error
  • When – now
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – fix the problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV
• Delete Authority Record
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – review command issues.  Save the information for audit, or recreate purposes
  • Switch – alter qmgr CONFIGEV
• Delete object
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – review command issues.  Save the information for audit, or recreate purposes
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CONFIGEV
• Get Inhibited
  • When – now
  • Who –  programmers, sysadmins
  • Action – if application queue then programmers need to  determination why.  If system queue, determine why.
  • This could be caused by application finding major problem and want to stop future processing.
  • It may cause the queue and storage media to full up
  • Switch – alter qmgr INHIBITEV
• Logger
  • When – now
  • Who –   sysadmins
  • Action – determine why
  • Switch – alter qmgr LOGGEREV
• Not Authorized (type 1) On an MQCONN or system connection call, the user is not authorized to connect to the queue manager
  • When – now
  • Who –  sysadmins, programmers
  • Action –  review is this is lack of definition or someone trying to access a resource to which they are not authorised
  • Switch – alter qmgr  AUTHOREV
• Not Authorized (type 2)On an MQOPEN or MQPUT1 call, the user is not authorized to open the object for the options specified.
  • When – now
  • Who –  sysadmins, programmers
  • Action –  review is this is lack of definition or someone trying to access a resource to which they are not authorised
  • Switch – alter qmgr  AUTHOREV
• Not Authorized (type 3) When closing a queue using the MQCLOSE call, the user is not authorized to delete the object,
  • When – now
  • Who –  sysadmins, programmers
  • Action –  review is this is lack of definition or someone trying to access a resource to which they are not authorised
  • Switch – alter qmgr  AUTHOREV
• Not Authorized (type 4) Indicates that a command has been issued from a user ID that is not authorized to access the object specified in the command
  • When – now
  • Who –  sysadmins, programmers
  • Action –  review is this is lack of definition or someone trying to access a resource to which they are not authorised
  • Switch – alter qmgr  AUTHOREV
• Not Authorized (type 5) On an MQSUB call, the user is not authorized to subscribe to the specified topic.
  • When – now
  • Who –  sysadmins, programmers
  • Action –  review is this is lack of definition or someone trying to access a resource to which they are not authorised
  • Switch – alter qmgr  AUTHOREV
• Not Authorized (type 6) On an MQSUB call, the user is not authorized to use the destination queue with the required level of access
  • When – now
  • Who –  sysadmins, programmers
  • Action –  review is this is lack of definition or someone trying to access a resource to which they are not authorised
  • Switch – alter qmgr  AUTHOREV
• Put Inhibited
  • When – now
  • Who –  programmers, sysadmins
  • Action – if application queue then programmers need to  determination why.  If system queue, determine why.
  • This could be caused by application finding major problem and want to stop future processing.
  • It may cause problems with the applications trying to put to the queue.  They may “pause” and retry and cause an upstream blockage
  • Switch – alter qmgr INHIBITEV
• Queue Depth High
  • When – now
  • Who –  programmers, sysadmins
  • Action – if application queue then programmers need to  determination why.  If system queue, determine why.
  • This could be caused by application finding major problem and want to stop future processing.
  • Switch – alter qmgr PERFMEV
• Queue Depth Low
  • When – now
  • Who –  programmers, sysadmins
  • Action – monitor the queue depth and activity
  • Switch – alter qmgr PERFMEV
• Queue Full
  • When – now
  • Who –  programmers, sysadmins
  • Action – if application queue then programmers need to  determination why.  If system queue, determine why.
  • This could be caused by application finding major problem and want to stop future processing.
  • Switch – alter qmgr PERFMEV
• Queue Manager Active
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who –  operations
  • Action – for information
  • Switch – alter qmgr STRSTPEV
• Queue Manager Not Active
  • When – now
  • Who –  operations
  • Action – check if this queue manager should be shut down.  If not resolve the problems
  • Switch – alter qmgr STRSTPEV
• Queue Service Interval High
  • When – now
  • Who –  programmers, sysadmins
  • Action – if application queue then programmers need to  determination why.  If system queue, determine why.
  • Switch – alter qmgr PERFMEV
• Queue Service Interval OK
  • When – now
  • Who –  programmers, sysadmins
  • Action – monitor the queue
  • Switch – alter qmgr PERFMEV
• Queue Type Error
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who –   sysadmins
  • Action – fix the set up problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV
• Refresh Authority Record
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – review command issued.  Save the information for audit, or recreate purposes
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CONFIGEV
• Refresh object
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – review command issued.  Save the information for audit, or recreate purposes
  • Switch – alter qmgr  CONFIGEV
• Remote Queue Name Error
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – resolve definitions problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV
• Transmission Queue Type Error
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – resolve definitions problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV
• Transmission Queue Usage Error
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – resolve definitions problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV
• Unknown Alias Base Queue
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – resolve definitions problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  LOCALEV
• Unknown Default Transmission Queue
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – resolve definitions problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV
• Unknown Object Name
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – application, sysadmins
  • Action – determine why object was not defined.  Check for unauthorized attempts
  • Switch – alter qmgr  LOCALEV
• Unknown Remote Queue Manager
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – resolve definitions problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV
• Unknown Transmission Queue
  • When – tomorrow
  • Who – sysadmins
  • Action – resolve definitions problem
  • Switch – alter qmgr  REMOTEEV

Our neighbour’s son came up to me and said “I am a magician – look here is my trick”.   The trick was a good trick, but then I had to explain that being a magician is more than doing just one trick.

I thought of this as I was reviewing some old note books and found the comments I made about a customer visit, and the “MQ architect and lead MQ programmer”.
This architect knew about Request-Reply and Fire-and-Forget, but he was missing other tricks.

The conversation went along the following lines

Messages processed in strict sequence

Me: Do your messages have a requirement to be strictly processed in sequence?
Him:  I dont know, why?

Me:You can only have one putting application, one channel, and one application getting messages.  If you have more than any of these – you can get messages processed in the wrong order.

Availability and scalability

Me: What response time requirements do you have for the end-to-end transaction?

Him: under 5 seconds

Me: If the back end queue manager goes down, how long does it take to restart?
Him:About a minute

Me: So one backend will not provide the availability you need.

Him: But we use clustering!
Me: On how many queue managers is the queue defined on?

Him: One

Me: Do you use different clusters for online and batch traffic?
Him:Why?
Me: To isolate traffic, and ensure that batch does not impact online, either in channel throughput – or filling up the System.Cluster.Transmit.Queue.

and so it went on.

The defaults for many cluster channels are not very good.  For example the values for
CLWLPRTY,  CLWLRANK and CLWLWGHT are all 0, meaning the lowest priority.

If you want to make one connection or queue a lower priority, you have to alter all the cluster receiver channels, and local queues, to have a value  – such as 5, let the definitions propagate round the network, and then change the one you wanted!

It may be worth doing this over an extended period, so you get good values, without disrupting your MQ environment.

Looking back over my time at IBM some things changed, some things have not changed much.

One of my first jobs was CICS build. These were the days when Systems Test took a year – and we had one build a month. My job was to compile all of the modules, print the listings, put the clean compiles in the rack, and take the failing listings to the developer. DASD was expensive, and I remember going to see the new double density 3340s with their 70MBs capacity! It was a big leap to be able to store listings on DASD when DASD was “cheap” – and spinning platters 2 foot across!

We ran the ( the original DOS, later renamed as VSE) and VS1under VM/360. If you wanted a new instance of DOS, you created the paging packs etc, and changed the VM exec, and started it.

We would put fixes onto the SYSRES, and give the developers a choice of the ‘old’ or ‘new’ SYSRES. it is strange that this quick deploy is now one of the “latest developments” in “cloud”.

The pendulum swings too and fro.

•  We had green screens. If it broke, you went to a different one and logged on – easy.
• We then had PCs, and a host emulator. If your PC had problems, you took it to someone to fix – and had to wait till it was fixed. Not easy.
•  We then moved all of the technology down to the PC, for example Eclipse. At one point I had more than 5 versions of Eclipse on my laptop, all at different versions, and fix levels. This was hard, as you were not allowed to logon to someone else machine. Upgrading these systems was fraught with danger – in case it did not restart – or the changes you just made were incompatible.
• We now have a web browser interface and all of the driving power is done in the back end systems – just like a green screen!

I spent 40+ years at IBM, and will be retiring on June 5th 2018.  When I was at IBM I blogged things which I thought were interesting, and hope to do the same when retire.  I am moving away from Hursley in the south of the UK and going to Orkney, on an island north of Scotland