System console

System console allows you to issue MVS commands, for example to start or stop services

Starting and stopping SDSF

the commands in the section below probably also apply to other servers and services, however the learning module covered SDSF, so SDSF is used as the example here

Stopping SDSF

SDSF can be started and stopped with the following syntax

STOP SDSF
or
P SDSF
Will perform a manual shutdown of SDSF
This should output some messages

ISF726I SDSF shutdown in progress for serevr SDSF.
ISF434I Server SDSF connection with XCF stopping.
ISF435I Server SDSF connection with XCF stopped.
IEF352I ADDRESS SPACE UNAVAILABLE
$hasp395 SDSF     ENDED

• Indication what server is being shut down (SDSF)
• First message indicating that XCF communications are being stopped by the SDSF
• Second message, confirming that the XCF connections have been stopped
• Message indicating that the address space used for the SDSF server has ended nad is now temporarily unavailable
• Final message indicating that the shutdown is complete

Starting SDSF

There are several options you can invoke if you need to start SDSF.
Usually the system will user the ISFPRM00 member of the PARMLIB to get the defaults
You can start SDSF using

START SDSF
or
S SDSF

In cases when you are performing some testing or you want to load a different PARMLIB member you can use the command as such
START SDSF,M=xx where the xx is the two digits at the end of the PARMLIB member name.

Additionally, there are many parameters you can specify as such
START SDSF,P=foobar where foobar is the parameter you want to supply.

Some example parameters are:

• DEBUG or DB
  • This will start SDSF in diagnostic, or debug mode, which will be useful when there are issues.
• TRACE or TR
  • This will be used when you're instructed to run a trace on SDSF when there are issues
• ARM
  • If Automatic Restart Manager is operational, providing this argument will register SDSF to use it. NOARM will do the oposite

Querying and modifying information about SDSF

After SDSF has started, you can issue the
MODIFY
command to display the status of attributes associated with it, for example
MODIFY SDSF,D

If you need to get information about the communication status between SDSF servers you can issue
MODIFY servername,DISPLAY,COMM

All of the SDSF server option (apart from ARM) that can be defined at START command, can also be invoked dynamically with the MODIFY command, for example:
MODIFY SDSF,P=DEBUG
will dynamically enable debug mode for SDSF

In order to refresh the ISFPARMS statements that have been updated you can enter
MODIFY SDSF,REFRESH

Starting and stopping communications between SDSF servers

If there are problems preventing SDSF data from other systems in the sysplax from being displayed, then it might be an issue with the communication between SDSF servers.

You can stop the communications using
MODIFY SDSF,STOP,COMM,TERMINATE - TERMINATE can be added at the end to force the connections to stop

You can then start the communications again with
MODIFY SDSF,START,COMM