Open System Services Management and Operations Guide (G06.30+, H06.08+, J06.03+)

12 Managing Problems
Most operational problems are easily resolved by following the recovery recommendations listed
in “Messages” (page 335). However, some of the messages indicate that a problem should be
reported to HP. This chapter discusses that possibility.
Problem-Reporting Procedures
Your site should have a formal procedure for reporting problems detected in its own software or
in HP software. The specific steps in your site’s reporting procedure will vary according to your
location and site management practices. However, one step is always necessary: you must know
the version of an installed file in order to report a problem with it. The following subsection provides
some hints on gathering that information for HP products that are used with the OSS environment.
Gathering Version Information About OSS Files
OSS files are either nonexecutable or executable. Executable program files for HP products always
contain product-version information; executable OSS scripts sometimes contain product-version
information. Nonexecutable files cannot contain such information.
You can determine whether a Guardian file is executable by using specifying the Guardian filename
in a FILEINFO command; the FILEINFO command returns a file code (100, 101, 180, 700, 800,
and so forth) indicating the type of file. See the File Utiliity Program (FUP) Reference Manual for a
list of file codes and what they mean.
You can determine whether a file in the OSS file system is a program file using the OSS shell file
command. For example, the following command shows that the OSS shell cd command file is a
text file (a script) and is unlikely to contain product-version information:
file /bin/cd /bin/ls /bin/ipcs
/bin/cd: commands text
/bin/ls: ELF object format,executable,NonStop OSS target
/bin/ipcs: TNS object format,executable,axcel region,
binder region,...
For more information on the OSS shell file command, see the file(1) reference page either
online or in the Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual.
When a problem occurs with a nonexecutable file such as a reference page, use the ls -al
command to determine the creation timestamp of the file. Report the creation timestamp of the file
to HP as the file’s product-version information.
When a problem occurs with an executable file, the method you use to obtain product-version
information depends on the kind of file involved.The possible methods are:
• For a product with a Subsystem Control Facility (SCF) module, such as the OSS Monitor, you
can use the SCF VERSION SUBSYS, VERSION MON, and VERSION PROCESS Commands.
• For other files, you can use the Guardian VPROC utility.
VPROC is the primary tool for gathering product-version information about an executable file.
VPROC and its use in the Guardian environment are completely described in the Guardian User’s
Guide. VPROC can also be used from the OSS shell through the vproc command or the gtacl
command.
For example, to obtain information about an OSS-related file in the Guardian file system such as
the PINSTALL utility, you can enter the following OSS command:
vproc /G/SYSTEM/ZOSS/PINSTALL
That command produces a display similar to the following:
VPROC-T9617D31-(14 APR 95) SYSTEM \NODE Date 18 DEC 1995, 12:12:45
COPYRIGHT TANDEM COMPUTERS INCORPORATED 1986 - 1995
Problem-Reporting Procedures 249