Issues with IBM WebsphereMQ V6.0 on OpenVMS IA64 V8.3-1H1

[Jeremy Begg]

Hi,

If the subject line of this query doesn't mean anything to you, stop reading now :-)

I'm performing a proof-of-concept exercise to help a customer migrate from OpenVMS Alpha to OpenVMS IA64. As part of the exercise I've installed IBM's WebsphereMQ V6.0 product onto an Integrity server running OpenVMS V8.3-1H1. (WebsphereMQ was formerly known as "MQ Series".)

My problem is that the MQ queue manager starts up but some processes do not, e.g. the Command Server and the Run Listener.

IBM think they know why the Command Server and Run Listener are not starting (apparently another key process, the "Process Manager"(?) dies shortly after the queue manager starts) and they're getting me to check some logical names.

In particular they want to check if this logical name exists in the LNM$SYSTEM table:

"/mqs_root/mqm/qmgrs/QM/@qmpersist/spipe/pmpipe" = "3238"

where 'QM' is the queue manager name. This looks rather odd (the logical name looks more like a file specification to me).

If you are successfully running WebsphereMQ V6.0 on OpenVMS IA64, could you please tell me if you had to do anything special to get it running? And could you see if the logical name described above (or similar) exists on your system?

Thanks,
Jeremy Begg

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] stop reading now :-)

Ha! Try and make me!

> [...] This looks rather odd (the logical
> name looks more like a file specification
> to me).

Perhaps, but it's legal. (Seems to need some
quotation marks at DEFINE or DEASSIGN, of
course.) Moreover, it's the kind of thing
which a UNIXy program could access using,
say, getenv().

Sadly, I have no actually useful knowledge on
this subject.

[Jeremy Begg]

Hi Steven,

Yes, to refer to it from DCL you require quotes but it's supposed to be created by the MQ application at startup and it's not. I agree it could be retrieved using getenv() but I'm just very suspicious of the fact that the purported logical name looks an awful lot like a UNIX file specification. Which is I want some feedback from a site which is using this successfully.

The fix might be as simple as defining a DECCRTL feature-setting logical name, but it would help to know what.

Regards,
Jeremy Begg

[Brad McCusker]

Jeremy,

I performed a similar task for a customer and continue to support that customer and their Websphere MQ installation. However, the difference in our case is that they are using V5.3 of Websphere.

We have no logicals defind of the form you mention. That logical looks a lot like this path which does exist on our installation: mqs_root:[mqm.qmgrs.QM.$QMPERSIST] (substitute the name of your Queue Manager for the "QM" directory). Unfortunately nothing in the "$QMPERSIST" subdirectory seems to match up with the rest of the logical name you showed.

FWIW, why go to V6? I doubt your source system is using V6. I don't remember off the top of my head what version I migrated from, but it was an absolute breeze going to V5.3 on integrity. And, yes, V5.3 is still supported on VMS.

Brad McCusker
Software Concepts International
www.sciinc.com

[Bill Hall]

Brad,

I thought just a few months ago I checked and IBM listed End of Support for WebSphere MQ for HP OpenVMS 5.3 as September 2010. But I just checked their website and see that it's now April 30, 2011.

http://www-111.ibm.com/software/support/lifecycle/PLCDetail.wss?synkey=L535466Q68603M11-P327846M28580P65-L414879B97234Y41

Bill

[John Gillings]

Jeremy,

Quick way to find the logical name might be:

$ SHOW LOGICAL *QM*

add /TABLE=*, just in case they put it in their own logical name table.

(or whatever upper case characters are in the name).

To track a process unexpectedly dying, I'd use auditing and/or accounting. Big hammer, set the AUDIT flag on the username that runs it (hopefully not SYSTEM!).

My WAG is that logical name defines a mailbox unit number for what they're calling a "pipe". I'd check that your definitions for LNM$PERMANENT_MAILBOX and LNM$TEMPORARY_MAILBOX are standard, and you haven't gone over 4 digits in mailbox names.

[Jeremy Begg]

Hi all, thanks for the responses.

I chose MQ V6 because of the support note but if that policy has been changed I'll reconsider. On the other hand, April 2011 isn't that far away so if we can get V6 working we'll stay with it.

Some close monitoring has revealed that the logical name does get created -- very briefly! And if I manually define the logical before running one of the affected programs, the logical name gets deassigned.

I suspect there is a timing issue: the logical name is created and destroyed before a critical process or code path gets to use it. Or something along those lines.

Regards,
Jeremy Begg

[Steve Reece_3]

Hi Jeremy,

One of my systems is running that version of MQ and it does have that logical name defined.

Steve

[Ian Miller.]

There is a way of tracing logical name activity if you really want to - see LNM$SDA

[Brad McCusker]

V5.3 Support ending in April 2011 - that is new, at least in the last couple months. With that in mind, I agree that V6 is the way to go.

Brad