MVS on your PC - Turnkey MVS System Utilities

BSPVTMWT - Wait for VTAM to Initialize

Don't you hate unnecessary and repeating work? Well, typing

1retry

on the MVS console cannot really be called "work", but it is unnecessary nevertheless. Whenever the MVS Turnkey system starts, the network (VTAM, NET) and TSO will be started automatically. Unfortunately, TSO is usually faster in its startup processing than VTAM and complains that it cannot accept logons. The reason is that NET hasn't finished initialising yet and hasn't made the TSO ACB available.

In comes the program BSPVTMWT - which waits for VTAM to make an ACB available.

Just prepend it to the PROC/JOB step that is to start a VTAM application. For TSO this would look similar to

//TSO     PROC MEM=00
//WAITTSO EXEC PGM=BSPVTMWT,PARM='TSO'
//TSO     EXEC PGM=IKTCAS00,TIME=1440
//PARMLIB  DD  DISP=SHR,DSN=SYS1.PARMLIB(TSOKEY&MEM),FREE=CLOSE
//PRINTOUT DD  SYSOUT=A,DCB=(LRECL=133,RECFM=FBB)

BSPVTMWT will now try 10 times (with an interval of 10 seconds in between) to open the VTAM ACB. If if succeeds, it will close it again and finish, and now TSO can grab the available ACB

You can change the number of retries by modifying the code and recompiling and relinking. The job to modify and submit is BSPVTMWT. It contains the assmbly/link JCL and the assembler source as instream data. In line 1 of the assembler source there is

MAXTRIES EQU 10

which determines how often the program will retry to open the ACB. In the next line you will see

RETRYSEC EQU 10

Which contains the interval between retries in seconds

Running the job assemble and link the whole thing Be sure to check the JCL for local naming conventions. You will need the SYS2.MACLIB from the turnkey system in order to successfully assemble the program

BSPVTMWT - The Archive

You can download the utility as a zip or a tar file. The contents in both files are identical

vtamwt.aws - a hercules tape file
vtamwt.jcl - JCL to load the tape to your MVS system
vtamwt.map - map of tape

Unpack both files into a directory of your choice. Adjust the JCL to your needs. Then, at the hercules console, enter

devinit 480,[yourdir/]vtamwt.aws
devinit 00c,[yourdir/]vtamwt.jcl eof

A Job should now be started that loads VTAMWAIT into your system. You can now, for example, modify the TSO procedure in SYS1.PROCLIB as shown above, and next time you start MVS there is no need any more for the

r 01,retry

If I managed to confuse you with these instructions, just drop me a line.

Enjoy your private hercules mainframe