Menu access

[Quirin]

Hi,

We have an OpenVMS 7.3. An application is running on this system and since one week we lost the access on some menu of the application. Not to all. We use an supervisor access as usual.

It seams this is a system problem, because nothing has change in the application.
The space on the application's partition is large.

How can i resolve this problem?
thanks
Jean-Christophe Quirin

Thanks

[Volker Halle]

Jean-Christophe,

is this the same question you asked yesterday ?

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=983938

If so, the same answers apply...

Please try to provide more information.

Volker.

[Quirin]

Hi,

Yes it's the same question, but i thought that the question was not post.

I look after your answer

Thank you very much

[Arch_Muthiah]

Quirin,

No need give the complete details of the application your have in your system, but as Bob/Volker asked, you can give little details about the env such as what utility, system tools (DEC FORMS, TDMS, FMS, SMG or any other) have been used with your menu based application, would be nice to look into.

Archunan

[Arch_Muthiah]

Quirin,

No need give the complete details of the application your have in your system, but as Bob/Volker asked, you can give little details about the env such as what utility, system tools (ACMS, DEC FORMS, TDMS, FMS, SMG or any other) have been used with your menu based application, would be nice to look into.

Archunan

[Quirin]

Volker and Bob

So, the answer to your question are the following :

This is a specific application for our company. We are using it with a terminal client called 'Reflection 4'.
I just want to use the menu trough the client terminal as we use it last week. And now some of the menu are not accessible. When i move on the menu and i validate my choice, nothing happen.

I have no error message.

I can't realy identify (i don't how can i do that) the application type. As i said e use the application with a terminal client.

The only procedure gave by the 'old' administrator indicates to use the PURGE command sometimes when the space on the parition is low. that's what i did each time, but this did not resolve the problem.

You can find some pdf files containing sceen captures about the files and menu.

thanks
Jean-Christophe Quirin



Jean-Christophe,

welcome to the OpenVMS ITRC forum.

Unfortunately, your problem description does not contain enough information to provide any meaningful help.

Let's start with the usual questions:

- what command or action within your application do you try to execute ?

- do you get any kind of error message ?

Without any kind of recognizable OpenVMS-related error message, it would be hard to provide any help, if you don't know what's supposed to happen in your application and now apparently doesn't.

Volker.

Robert Gezelter Dec 15, 2005 20:13:32 GMT points for answer: Unassigned 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

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Jean-Christophe,

From your description, there is quite a bit of missing information. The menu system you are using is unidentified, but if the ONLY thing that was done to the system was a PURGE, a file that was important to the menu system must have been deleted.

Having implemented several menuing systems of varying levels of sophistication on OpenVMS, it is difficult to speculate on precisely what is happening without access to the actual menu system involved (or at least a good documentation set).

Do you have more (or can you get more information)?

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Robert Gezelter]

Jean-Christophe,

I downloaded the files that you attached to your last posting.

A look at the files does not explain the details of precisely what is not working correctly. A detailed review of precisely what happens, from the beginning will identify the (now) missing step.

It goes without saying that you should preseve your system backups from BEFORE the problem started.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to to this level of troubleshooting on ITRC. When I do this type of troubleshooting for clients (with full access to the system), it is sometimes a very quick process. In other cases, it has required significant work to recover/reconstruct the missing or corrupted files. It is impossible to speculate in advance.

The good news is that frequently the problem is something minor, and the correction is equally simple. Somtimes, the problem is not even a missing/corrupted file, but a file protection issue.

In all cases, the basics are the same: review the process step-by-step to determine what is not functioning as expected, and correct the problem.

In terms of resolving this problem by working through ITRC, I am not sure how to proceed. Going one step at a time here in the forum has risks and can be very time-consuming, I would not recommend it.

If I can be of assistance, please let me know.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Volker Halle]

Jean-Christophe,

I've also looked at the screen shots provided, but they do not help in troubleshooting your application problem.

Do I understand correctly, that you're missing some item in the menue of your application ? Such a problem would be extremely difficult to analyse, especially if you don't have any idea on how the application menue system works. You would certainly need someone with knowledge about the internals of your application menue design.

If this problem isn't critical to your business, we can try to do some step-by-step diagnosis in this forum...

First let's try to find out about the open files/images in your application program. Please provide attachments as .TXT files using cut & paste from your terminal window display.

- login to your system
- before starting your application program, issue the command SHOW PROC at DCL level and note the Process ID: xxxxxxxx.
- start your application in this process

- from another privileged session on your system, issue the following commands:
$ SET PROC/PRIV=CMK
$ ANAL/SYS
SDA> SET PROC/ID=xxxxxxxx ! Process ID from above
SDA> SHOW PROC/IMAGE
SDA> SHOW PROC/CHAN
SDA> EXIT

Then provide the SDA output as a .TXT attachment. This will tell us the open files and the activated images in your application program and we may be able to tell, what kind of menue system is being used, if it's not a self-written menue system inside the application.

IF you believe that you've deleted a required file, it may be possible to use the undocumented OpenVMS SET WATCH FILE utility (which traces file system IOs) and find out, if there are attempted unsucessful accesses to a file.

Volker.

[Quirin]

Bob and Volker

Here is the file containing the screen captures (not Txt file, sorry) with results of the commands you ask me to use.

Thank you

[Volker Halle]

Jean-Christoph,

this seems to be a self-written menu system using the SMG routines (OpenVMS screen management).

The MENUGENE.EXE application is started by a DCL procedure called STRATEGE.COM. It does not seem to use any other non-OpenVMS shareable images.

Does the STRATEGE.COM procedure set up any envrionment (e.g. logicals etc.) before running the MENUGENE.EXE ?

Can you remember the extact text string of one of the menues you are missing now ? You could search for that string in the MENUGENE.EXE image or in any other file in the application directories, e.g.

$ SEARCH "text-from-menue" dev:*.*

In this way, you could at least find out, in which file the missing menue items may reside.

IF we assume, that the menue contents is normally read from a disk file, you could use the following commands, to find out any files accessed or any access failures:

$ SET HOST/LOG 0
login as system
$ SET WATCH FILE/CLASS=MAJOR
$ @start-your-app-here
$ SET WATCH FILE/CLASS=NOMAJOR
$ LOGOUT

$ SEA SETHOST.LOG 910 ! look for nosuchfile errors

Providing screen output into a text attachment (instead of voluminous PDF files) is easy:

You cut & paste from your Reflection window and put the data into a text editor. Then save the file and attach it to your next reply.

Volker.

[Quirin]

Volker,

To Answer to your question "Does the STRATEGE.COM procedure set up any envrionment (e.g. logicals etc.) before running the MENUGENE.EXE ?"
I can't answer, because simply i don't know

There are many menus i can't use, one of them is the menu call "ADMINISTRATION (admin)". I comment in the file all the menu in "OUTILS" that are not avalaible.

You can found all the results in the attachment, mix of texte and pictures.

Thank you Volker

[Volker Halle]

Jean-Christoph,

this is just guesswork !

There is a file ACCE_DAT.SAV, which seems to reference another menue MANAGE.MNU. The current version of ACCE.DAT does NOT seem to include that reference...

Could you try:

$ COPY ACCE_DAT.SAV ACCE.DAT;0/LOG

It also looks like you even have the FORTRAN Source code for this application available. Can't you find a person knowledgable in FORTRAN and OpenVMS in your vicinity ? Try the OpenVMS.ORG french home page:

http://fr.openvms.org/
or
http://www.didiermorandi.com/

Volker.

[Quirin]

Thank very much you Volker

The copy process of the acce.dat file seems to resolve the problem. The menus are now availables, i'm waiting for a confirmation from the users ; But i think it's good now.

How can i thank you more ? if you have any problems with a Microsoft Domain or Windows Server, may be i could help you ;-))
jcquirin@eoc-france.fr

THANKS VOLKER HAVE A GOOD CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Jean-Christophe

[Volker Halle]

Jean-Christoph,

I'm glad I could help you. Another happy OpenVMS user, that's all my motivation needs ;-)

Please also see this for assgning points to helpful answers:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33

Thanks for the offer regarding Windows support questions, but I'm trying to prevent that road as much as possible.

Joyeux Noel !

Volker.