Undeliverable messages

If BMS cannot deliver a message to an eligible terminal, it continues to try periodically.

Delivery is retried until one of the following conditions occurs:
  • A change in terminal status allows the message to be sent.
  • The message is deleted by the destination terminal operator.
  • The purge delay elapses.
The purge delay is the period of time allowed for delivery of a message once it is scheduled for delivery. After this interval elapses, the message is discarded. The purge delay is a system-wide value, set by the PRGDLY option in the system initialization table. Its use is optional; if the systems programmer sets PRGDLY to zero, messages are kept indefinitely.

When BMS purges a message in this fashion, it sends an error message to the terminal you specify in ERRTERM. (If you use ERRTERM without a specific terminal name, it sends the message to the principal facility of the task that originally created the message. If you omit ERRTERM altogether, no message is sent.)