topic Re: What is ERRFMT in Open VMS? in Operating System - OpenVMS

What is ERRFMT in Open VMS?

Alanjones_1 — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 06:24:25 GMT

Dear friends,

what is ERRFMT in Open VMS? If any link...

Regards
balamurali

Re: What is ERRFMT in Open VMS?

Hein van den Heuvel — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 06:39:39 GMT

It the system error format process.

Started after boot with SYS$STARTUP:VMS$CONFIG-050_ERRFMT.COM

Writes binary log files like into SYS$ERRORLOG

RTFM?
Google?

hth,
Hein.

Re: What is ERRFMT in Open VMS?

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 06:41:11 GMT

From the (VAX) internals guide :

At startup it recuperates error log allocation buffers from the dump file and write it to sys$errorlog:errlog.sys.

Further it logs all the device and other errors such as memory errors, machine events such as cold start, (dis)mounts, timestamps and user messages (via system calls).

Wim

Re: What is ERRFMT in Open VMS?

Ian Miller. — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 08:02:07 GMT

From
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82FINAL/aa-pv5nj-tk/00/00/71-con.html#errorformatterdescription

The ERRFMT process, which starts when the system is booted, periodically empties error log buffers, transforms the descriptions of errors into standard formats, and stores formatted information in an error log file on the system disk. (See Maintaining Error Log Files http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82FINAL/aa-pv5nj-tk/00/00/72-con.html#monitor-2
)

The Error Formatter allows you to send mail to the SYSTEM account or another user if the ERRFMT process encounters a fatal error and deletes itself. (See Using ERRFMT to Send Mail. http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82FINAL/aa-pv5nj-tk/00/00/72-con.html#errfmt-mail
)

Re: What is ERRFMT in Open VMS?

Chinraj Rajasekaran — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:12:47 GMT

Murali,

I think, simply we can say If you want details from the Errorlog.sys if anything happned to your system (particularly hardware related errors) then ERRFMT process should be running to report the errors.

regards
Raj

Re: What is ERRFMT in Open VMS?

Volker Halle — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:48:58 GMT

Raj,

ERRFMT is the OpenVMS process, which gets the reported errors from memory and writes them to SYS$ERRRLOG:ERRLOG.SYS. Drivers and other OpenVMS components write errors into memory buffers only.

If ERRFMT would not be running, there would be nothing in ERRLOG.SYS

Analyzing the contents of ERRLOG.SYS on OpenVMS Alpha is another story. You need ANAL/ERR/ELV (from V7.3-2 onwards) or DECevent (DIAGNOSE) or SEA (System Event Analyzer, a component of WEBES).

Volker.