Collecting CICS troubleshooting data (CICS MustGather) for IBM Support
When you encounter a problem in CICS® Transaction Server for z/OS® (CICS TS), before you contact IBM® Support, ensure that you collect troubleshooting data, also known as MustGather. CICS Support can use troubleshooting data to identify and resolve your specific problem. Different symptoms require different data. MustGather documents expedite the troubleshooting process and save you time. The following information applies to all CICS versions unless otherwise specified.
General information
Gather the following general information for every problem record:
- A complete description of the problem that includes the following questions:
- When did the problem first occur?
- Is the problem a one time failure or recurring?
- Was software or hardware maintenance applied?
- Did the failure occur while doing a specific task?
- Is the failure occurring in more than one address space?
- CICS product version, release, and maintenance level
- Operating system version, release, and maintenance level
- Related products version, and release levels
- Your valid contact phone number and email address
Component-specific information
After you collect general information, gather information that is specific to your component. From the following list, click the problem type or component to view a listing of specific documentation that the support team requires to diagnose your problem:
- Abend 878 or 80A
- Ansible® IBM z/OS CICS collection
- CICS-MQ adapter or CICS-MQ bridge
- CICSPlex® SM
- CMCI JVM server
- Coupling facility data table server
- Db2®
- Event processing
- CICS Explorer® errors or incorrect output
- CICS Explorer UI not available or not stable
- File control (non-RLS)
- File control (RLS)
- IMS Database Control (DBCTL)
- IBM Documentation
- Intersystem communication (ISC)
- IP interconnectivity (IPIC)
- Java™ (JVM server)
- Logger
- Language Environment® (LE) abend
- LIBRARY management
- Mobile extensions
- Multiregion operation (MRO)
- Node.js applications
- Performance
- Policies
- Program checks or abends
- SFR (Service Flow Runtime)
- Shared data tables (SDT)
- Short on storage (SOS)
- Storage violation
- Terminal hang
- Temporary storage servers
- Waits or loops
- Web services, XML, and JSON transformation
- Search the CICS support site for known problems using symptoms like the message number and error codes.
- If you find a fixing PTF, see Ordering CICS products and maintenance for the options that are available to order CICS maintenance.
- Gather the documentation and work with the CICS support team to resolve your problem.
- If you experience hang situations with CICS and RLS, take
system dumps of SMSVSAM address spaces and dataspaces, Master address spaces, XCF address spaces and
dataspaces, and CICS address spaces. For more information, see Using dumps
for CICS problem determination on z/OS. To capture a dump on each z/OS system in your sysplex, use the following z/OS command with the REMOTE option when the
hang occurs:
DUMP COMM=(dumpname) R nn,JOBNAME=(SMSVSAM, XCFAS,*MASTER*,cicsjob*),CONT R nn,DSPNAME=('XCFAS'.*,'SMSVSAM’.*),CONT R nn,REMOTE=(SYSLIST=*('XCFAS','SMSVSAM‘,’cicsjob*’, JOBNAME=(SMSVSAM, XCFAS,*MAIN*,cicsjob*), DSPNAME=('XCFAS'.*,'SMSVSAM’.*), REMOTE=(SYSLIST=*('XCFAS','SMSVSAM,cicsjob*,*MAIN*), (*MAIN*,cicsjob,XCFAS,ssnmIRLM,ssnmCTRL,ssnmDBRC,ssnmDLI),