Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

If I need to learn the reading a "raw" dump - where to start with? (I meant not a formatted dump or so)

You have the PSW, you have the registers, you have the dump. Everything you need to get started. Application program? System program? Vendor program?

Thanks William.

I know there is Process status word and that will have the address to last instruction but than that is all I know. What to do next? The IBM Documentation is more or less, helpful when you "know" a bit already. I'm just starting with it.

I'd like to start with Application Programs first.

Dump reading is more of an art than a science -- there is no cookbook, step-by-step, approach that anybody can give you to learn how to read a dump. The wide variety of system abends that cause dumps means that a generic approach doesn't work. Your best bet is to get some dumps and figure out what the problem is from the dump.

Thanks. This indeed is an art. I'm still stuggling to get a good start on this.

http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ ... s/ez2dgz50 - The z/OS Diagnosis Bookshelf is a good site to bookmark. If you need to get into the task control blocks, those are mainly in the 6-Volume "MVS Data Areas" books (GA32-0853 through GA32-0858).

On System Trace, you can find out more about it from Jerry Ng’s excellent presentation at the August 2011 SHARE conference:

Thanks.