gtpm1m3vTPF V4R1 Migration Guide: 3.1 to 4.1

Diagnostic Tools

Before this release, the TPF system did not support the register and S/370 branch trace facility The only way to use the functions of the program event recording (PER) trace facility was to run the TPF system under the IBM Virtual Machine (VM) system. All macros for a single I-stream were traced in the same table. As one ECB gave up control and disappeared, new trace entries were added for the currently active ECB. This meant that high activity levels by one ECB could age out the trace entries created by other ECBs. For performance reasons, only file-resident ENTxC or BACKC calls were traced.

The SNA I/O trace facility had one table for the entire system. When a device error occurred, the information was frequently aged out by other high-use devices.

Beginning with this release, the TPF 4.1 system supports the following hardware facilities:

The PER trace facility provides a hardware trace facility that traps a program event when a specific event occurs. In the TPF 4.1 system, you can use the PER trace facility to trap the following:

The new ZSPER command allows you to specify the events that you want to trap. See Using the Program Event Recording (PER) Trace Facility for more information about the ZSPER command. See ESA/370 Principles of Operation for more information about PER.

Note:
The performance cost of running some PER traces restricts them to test systems or off-peak periods.

The following enhancements were made to the diagnostic capabilities in the TPF 4.1 system:

The new ZSTRC command activates all of these system traces. The output of the traces is included in system error dumps. The ZSTRC command also activates block checking mode and virtual-equals-real (VEQR) mode. See Block Checking Mode for more information about block checking mode. See Testing the Migration (Virtual-Equals-Real (VEQR) Mode) for more information about VEQR mode. See System Log Trace Facility for more information about the parameters for the ZSTRC command.

The TPF 4.1 system provides the following improvements to the SNA communication trace facilities as well:

The TPF 4.1 system no longer supports program test vehicle (PTV) phase I (unit test).