Ultracomp
Sceptre 5.0


This area contains Sceptre 5.0 amendment notices. To use any of these amendments, the relevant file should be downloaded to a local disk, uploaded to VME, the AMENDMODULE parameters merged into the appropriate patch file and the file executed as described in the comments at the start of the patch file.

The amendments contained in this file area have all had their local tags, indicated by a £ (pound sign) replaced with a # (hash), so that the files will only contain ASCII (7-bit) characters. The transfer method used to move these files onto your VME system should be configured so that hash (#) characters in the ASCII source files are translated to pound (£) characters in the EBCDIC destination.

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All Amendment Files since Software Notice 20

asummary Summary descriptions of latest amendments.
All amendments now contain # (hash) in place of £ (pound sign).
s500amn.exe Self extracting archive of all the available amendments.
All amendments now contain # (hash) in place of £ (pound sign).
634 RE: Ultracomp VME Products and the ICL Year 2000 Enabling Kit
Ref: ICL PC-Paris SKE 93697
Describes a problem caused by the ICL Year 2000 enabling kit and proivides a solution.
633 This amendment causes the Sceptre IDMS snapshot to use the new module produced by Sceptre amendment 631.
632 This amendment causes the Sceptre IDMS snapshot to use the new module produced by Sceptre amendment 631.
631/1 This notice introduces a new Sceptre module which will be used by the Sceptre IDMS monitor and Snapshot. This new module enabled Sceptre IDMSX 610 services to be monitored.
The new module is created by the SCL procedure ICL8_UCSP_631, which should be placed in the Sceptre ICLRSISOURCE library and then executed using EXSCL.
630 The Sceptre snapshot "VM Usage" screen shows the application servername of a VM running Open-TP as part of the username, this causes the jobname to be truncated.
This amendment removes the application servername from the username.
628 This amendment and its accompanying SCL procedure introduce a delay into the Sceptre TPMS monitor whenever the monitor detects that the TPMS service CVM has been loaded. This is to give the CVM a chance to load and initialise the service tables before the monitor attaches itself to them.
627 There is a problem with the Sceptre UCS_TELL command that can cause it to fail with a result code of 31501 or -31753 along with the following error message:
FAILURE CALLING VME INTERFACE FOR ...TELL COMMAND
This amendment corrects this problem.
625 UCS_TREND_UPDATE will fail if an input file has a generation gap that is greater than 100 generations. This amendment increases the maximum permitted gap to 300.
622/1 When Overlord is monitoring an IDMS service, the IDMS meters PLT_RES and P_RES can sometimes overflow causing the Overlord monitor to fail with a PE 2.0 at displacements: X4A8A or X4AAE in IIN 2 of module ICL8UCS9MON. This occurs whether or not the meters PLT_RES or P_RES are referenced in the OSDL.
This amendment corrects this problem.
621 32/2 program error when monitoring an IDMS service.
619 New Overlord configuration procedure
617/3 Overlord monitor fails to alert on hardware that has a state of "UNAV"
616 Dynamic index dumps at x4948 in UCS0_SCEPTRE if user/library greater than 48 characters.
615 UCSV dumps if snapshot interval below 1 second
610 Sceptre Trend Update and Usage Reports which take input data from Sceptre Trend Files will ignore second and subsequent such files, and will instead treat the Extract Items which should come from these files as if they came from the first named Trend File.
The same problem occurs with multiple User File input, and also with multiple TPS Monitor File input. In all cases Extract Items which are defined as derived from the second or subsequent User File or TPS Monitor file will be treated as if they came from the first-named file of the appropriate type. (In the case of TPS Monitor Files, this happens only when the Service Name is not supplied in both the Trend Restart data and the Extract Item definition.)
The amendment ensures that Sceptre Trend Update and Usage Reports will correctly marry Extract Items with the Trend, User, or TPS Monitor Files from which they are derived.
609/2 This amendment corrects a problem with Sceptre monitoring a TPMS service that has more than 255 AVMs, this causes the TPMS monitor and snapshot to abort with the following error:
INTERRUPT ERROR: -700
DESCRIPTION: SIZE ERROR
PROGRAM AT BYTE DISPLACEMENT: 2308 (X0904)
IN PROCEDURE: UCSCOLTP_C
608/2 MACROLAN usage may be reported with spurious figures, either greater than 100% or equal to zero, in Sceptre Usage Reports and Trends. This can arise particularly if SMARTfibre or SMARTarray systems are monitored, but may occur in other situations as well. This problem may also manifest itself by the appearance of messages in the Job Journal of the form:
FILE ff -VE USAGE yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss ITEM NO: nn
where Extract Item 'nn' is derived from Field Name MLAN-BYTES.
601 Sceptre Usage reports and Trends will produce spurious usage values of zero for SMARTarray controllers if the Extract Item definitions provided for HSDC controllers are used.
600 When reporting on SMARTarray devices, the FDS screen of Sceptre VME Snapshot will produce figures for Disc Usage which are too large by approximately a factor of three.
599 The Overlord monitor will fail with a program error type 5 subtype 1 at displacement X21E0 in IIN 1 of module ICL8UCS0SERVICE if an IDMS or TPMS service definition named in the MONITORS division of the OSDL can not be found in the definitions file.
597/1 UCSOVCONFIGURATION will fail to detect SMARTarray devices on VME systems.
596 Sceptre Usage Reports which use SMON files for input, and which have a start time of 00:00 may incorporate the last monitor period of the preceding day. This may also occur at times which correspond to the change-over between prime and non-prime schedules. This can occur even with amendment 594 applied.
595 Sceptre VME Snapshot may not show data for SMARTarray discs on the 'F' screen, although such discs can be monitored on the Overview screen.
594 Sceptre Usage reports may be produced with an extra report interval that precedes the requested start time, or with a lengthened first interval which embraces the requested start time.
593 UCS_SETUP or UCS_IMPORT may fail to carry forward certain of the standard Usage Report definitions.
591 Sceptre Overlord cannot monitor more than one IDMS 400 service from the same service library.
590 If the first service module loaded by Overlord is an IDMS service, and a TPMS service module is loaded from the same service library, but is not the first TPMS service module loaded, Overlord may report error messages of one or both of the following types:
TPMS MESSAGE-TYPE 'XXXXXXXXXXXX' NOT FOUND IN SERVICE 'YYYYYYYY'
TPMS AVM-TYPE 'XXXXXXXXXXXX' NOT FOUND IN SERVICE 'YYYYYYYY'
589/4 Smart Array stats wrong following application of the latest VME envelope.
588 When a Usage Report or Trend Definition uses 'fuzzy matching' to define one or more of its Extract Items, the figures for such items may sometimes include the total usage (as derived for the similar items with the Occurrence Value *TOTAL) in addition to the true values as derived by fuzzy matching.
587/1 When a reporting interval is specified, UCS_TPS_FILE_PRINT may show Misaligned time periods within the report Duplicate message names
586/2 The Overlord OSDL preprocessor may report the following error messages after loading a TPMS or IDMS service module:
OVERLORD SYS ERR Unable to insert TP details.
OVERLORD An error has been reported loading TP service 'xxxxxxxx'
OVERLORD SYS ERR Unable to insert IDMS details
OVERLORD An error has been reported loading IDMS service 'xxxxxxxx'
585 This amendment corrects a problem in Sceptre that can cause a record lock to be held indefinitely on the definitions file. This can cause other Sceptre sessions to hang waiting for the lock to be released.
584 The value shown by Sceptre for the number of Page Lock Table Reserves for an IDMS service is 11 times the correct value.
583 In a heavily-loaded machine, the Sceptre VME Snapshot may produce figures for channel usage on the 'FDS' screen which exceed 100%. This may also be accompanied by discrepancies between the figures for transfers per second shown on this screen, and the same data shown on the Overview screen.
581 There is a problem with the Sceptre VME snapshot that can cause it to fail with a privilege error. This only occurs when a node is lost on a multi-node machine.
This amendment corrects this error.
578/1 Sceptre produces garbage data when monitoring TPMS 600,610 & 620 services.
577 If an IDMS service is open, but has not been active when UCS_MONITOR starts, the statistics records for the first snapshot for that service in the UCSTFILE are incomplete. This can have the effect that UCS_FILE_PRINT sometimes shows no statistics for the IDMS service when it becomes active,and/or that UCS_TREND_UPDATE, UCS_TAB and usage reports wrongly show the first active snapshot as having zero values for some statistics items, such as number of success units.
576 On VME SV293 systems on which RRL3 has been applied, a MAC terminal may in some circumstances appear to hang (in Receive mode) after displaying the Sceptre initial menu screen.
574/1 Sceptre Usage Reports and Trends may produce incorrect usage figures for duplexed partitions.
573 Sceptre may produce invalid figures for Disc Controller usage whenproducing Usage Reports or updating Trends, if there are more than 32 controllers attached to a system, and at least 33 of them are being monitored by SMON.
572 UCS_MONITOR can fail with a bound check failure in procedure UCSCOLTP_C,typically at byte displacement XB30 or XCB8 if a TPMS service is re-prepared with an increased number of terminals or message types, while the UCS_MONITOR is running.
569 Overlord fails to reset ONETIME and ONCHANGE alerts when requested to do so using a TELL command such as UCSOV_TELL(..., ACTION=START, OBJECT=ALERT_REPORT, ....) even though the TELL command returns a success response.
567 The Sceptre VME snapshot that can fail with a PE 6/0 in IIN 2 at displacement x0000FA60, if an individual VM has a store size greater than 64 megabytes.
566 Sceptre Arbiter sometimes produces incorrect values for TPMS service availability times. This can happen if Sceptre treats the records in the accounting journal for the spooler for the job journal as records for the job itself.
563 The SCL procedure UCS_TPS_FILE_PRINT ignores the INTERVAL parameter when processing the TPS monitoring file.
560/4 The earlier version of this amendment released with the Software Notice 20 patch files includes an error which may cause Sceptre to fail with a program error in ICL8UCS0TAB when updating a trend or producing a usage report, or may cause Sceptre to produce spurious warning messages related to fuzzy-matched items.
549 Overlord will fail with a PE 10.2 at displacement X8DF8 in IIN 2 of module ICL8UCS9MON if the allocation to be used for the local alert file has insufficient free space at the start of the Overlord run. Furthermore, Overlord may use an excessive amount of OCP if the allocation used for the local alert file becomes full during an Overlord run.
548/2 When producing Sceptre Usage Reports, the first interval on the report may be double the requested length of interval.
534 If only the Overlord option of Sceptre 5.00 is being installed, the installation process will erroneously attempt to set up a Definitions File with an initial size of zero blocks. This is illegal on VME, and will cause the setup process to fail. The attached amendment will remedy this error.
503/1 Sceptre-Overlord may fail with a PE 32.0 at displacement X39E2 in IIN 2 of module ICL8UCS9MON if a TPMS service module has been loaded using the prepared names added to the module by UCSPREPARESERVICE, and TPMS message- type meters for this service are used in the OSDL. The failure is caused by an error in amendment 503/0 issued with the Sceptre

Software Notices

Software Notice 20 Sceptre Software Notice 20. Sceptre amendment files up to March 1994.

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  • Page last updated: 24 April 1998