MVS on your PC

How to boot the System

OS and JES2 Commands Cheat Sheet

VTAM Commands Cheat Sheet

You have installed the MVS turnkey system. Okay. And now? What do you do now? Change to the directory where you installed mvs, run the startmvs script. This will start hercules, but not (yet) MVS.

In order to really USE your system, you will need a tn3270 client. I did include a windows client, the QWS3270 free client. This will work as a master console, but has serious drawbacks when used in a TSO session.

You can download another tn3270 client from the x3270 homepage. It comes in two flavours, a graphical version and a text version. I have included the a text-mode tn3270, called c3270. It is contained in the directory c3270-3.2. In order to build it, change to that directory, and then enter

./configure

and then

make

The CD-Rom also contains the documentation in the c3270-3.2/html subdirectory. Note, that you need two tn3270 sessions for OS consoles, and one client sessions for each TSO session. These must be started before you IPL the system.

A standard telnet client is also needed as a safety measure. The telnet client needs to be manually started with a command like this

telnet localhost 3270

There seems to be a serious problem with Telnet under Windows 2000. As an alternative you may wish to use Hyperterm, which is a communication program that can use TCP/IP to connect to our system as well

Well, you could start now to IPL MVS. IPL? What kind of a word is that? IPL stands for Iinitial Program Load and is the process used to initialize MVS. On a PC this process is usually called "booting".

During system generation the MVS "bootstrap" program (called the IPLtext) has been loaded onto the MVSRES disk. You can now ipl the system off device 148 (volume MVSRES) using the following command on the hercules console

ipl 148

on the Hercules console!!. After a few seconds, the tn3270 session that is connected to address 010 should show

IEA101A SPECIFY SYSTEM PARAMETERS FOR RELEASE 03.8 .VS2

Now you enter

r 00,clpa

because this is the first IPL of MVS. IF you are starting the system at some later time, you can just press the >enter< key as a CLPA is not generally required then

A few seconds later you will see some messages

| IEA357I ERRORS IN IEAPAK00 LIST
| IEA357I IGC0J05B INVALID - MODULE IGNORED
| IEA357I IGG08101 INVALID - MODULE IGNORED
| IEA357I IGG08102 INVALID - MODULE IGNORED
| IEA357I IGG08103 INVALID - MODULE IGNORED
| IEA357I IGG08104 INVALID - MODULE IGNORED
| IEA357I IGC11110 INVALID - MODULE IGNORED
| IEA357I IGC12110 INVALID - MODULE IGNORED

These are no errors, just information, and you can safely ignore them. Why are they issued? There is a configuration datset called SYS1.PARMLIB, which describes the MVS startup process. The modules mentioned in the messages above are currently not in the system. Of course, if you decide later to add more features to MVS (like ACF/TCAM), these messages might go away. Or, you could edit member IEAPAK00 of SYS1.PARMLIB to remove the reference to these modules.

After about a minute or two you should see

 IEF165I // START JES2
 IGF992I  MIH INIT COMPLETE, PRI=000300, SEC=000015
 IEE360I SMF NOW RECORDING ON SYS1.MANX ON MVSRES TIME 20.10.47
 IEF677I WARNING MESSAGE(S) FOR JOB JES2     ISSUED
*00 $HASP426 SPECIFY OPTIONS - HASP-II, VERSION JES2 4.1

You can ignore all except the last message, to which you reply

r 00,format,noreq

Again, this is only required because this is the first time that JES2 gets started, and the spool dataset SYS1.HASPACE needs to be formatted. If you start the system later, you would enter

r 00,,noreq

Back to our IPL, though. A message might now be displayed

*01 $HASP436 REPLY Y OR N TO CONFIRM CHECKPOINT RECORD CHANGE

to which your reply is

r 01,y

Again, you need to be patient, JES2 is now formatting the SPOOL0 volume. When everything has been formatted, you will see

   - r 00 SUPPRESSED
     IEE600I REPLY TO 00 IS;SUPPRESSED
   - $HASP493 JES2 COLD-START IS IN PROGRESS
   - $HASP423 SPOOL0 IS BEING FORMATTED
    *         *IEA000A 00C,INT REQ,42,0E40,4000,,,JES2
               IEE041I THE SYSTEM LOG IS NOW ACTIVE
               $HASP000 OK
               $HASP000 OK
               $HASP000 OK
               $HASP000 OK
               $HASP000 OK
               $HASP000 OK
               $HASP000 ID 1    T=**.** I=3600 $SI1-I4
               $HASP000 OK

 IEE152I     ENTER     CANCEL     D C,K


                                                        IEE159E MESSAGE WAITING

The most important part is the text in the lower right corner:

                                                        IEE159E MESSAGE WAITING

This is to say that MVS has more messages for you, but cannot display it because the screen is full. The easiest thing to do now is to press PF11. This will invoke the command

  K S,DEL=RD,SEG=19,CON=Y,RNUM=19,RTME=001

to place the console in Roll Deletable mode. Switch over to the other console session (address 011) and press PF11 there as well.

After a few more messages, VTAM and TSO get started automagically. You will see

    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR IEDIAE   IN VTAMLIB
    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR IEDIAE   IN VTAMLIB
    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR IEDIAE   IN VTAMLIB
    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR IEDIAE   IN VTAMLIB
    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR IEDIAK   IN VTAMLIB
    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR IEDIAK   IN VTAMLIB

if you have generated TCAM into the system, or

    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR ISTYTCM1 IN VTAMLIB
    STC    8  IST126I  ISTYTCM1 MODE NOT SUPPORTED DUE TO LOADING FAILURE
    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR ISTYTCM2 IN VTAMLIB
    STC    8  IST126I  ISTYTCM2 MODE NOT SUPPORTED DUE TO LOADING FAILURE
    STC    8  IST025I  BLDL FAILED FOR ISTYTCM3 IN VTAMLIB
    STC    8  IST126I  ISTYTCM3 MODE NOT SUPPORTED DUE TO LOADING FAILURE

if TCAM was not included in the Sysgen process. You can safely ignore these messages. If VTAM initializes correctly (and it should), you will see

    STC    8  IST110I  NETWORK SOLICITOR STARTED
    STC    8  IST197I  SAVED CONFIGURATION APPLTSO  READ FROM VTAMOBJ
    STC    8  IST093I  APPLTSO  ACTIVE
    STC    8  IST197I  SAVED CONFIGURATION APPLCICS READ FROM VTAMOBJ
    STC    8  IST093I  APPLCICS ACTIVE
    STC    8  IST197I  SAVED CONFIGURATION LCLMAJ00 READ FROM VTAMOBJ
    STC    8  IST093I  LCLMAJ00 ACTIVE

While VTAM was initilizing, TSO was started. Usually, TSO is faster than VTAM, and you will see the message

  - STC    9  IEF403I TSO - STARTED - TIME=09.38.10
00 *STC    9 *01 IKT003D TCAS UNABLE TO ACCEPT LOGONS, REASON CODE=0092 REPLY
   * 'RETRY' OR 'TERM'

After the message

    STC    8  IST020I  VTAM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE

has been displayed, you should enter

R 01,RETRY

to which MVS responds with

               IEE600I REPLY TO 01 IS;RETRY
   - STC    9  IKT007I TCAS ACCEPTING LOGONS
   - STC    9  IKT005I TCAS IS INITIALIZED

MVS is now operational. When you press PF12, the following JES2 commands will be issued

$SPRINTER1
$SPRINTER2
$SPUNCH1

to enable printing/punching of job output.

System Initialization is now complete

Logging on to TSO

Switch to one of the tn3270 sessions and enter

The userid of a predefined TSO userid
- HERC01 - Sysprog - no password
- HERC02 - Sysprog - no password
- HERC03 - Standard user - no password
- HERC04 - Standard user - no password
- IBMUSER - Special user, for creating new accounts, no password
LOGON xxx
where xxx a userid created by (e.g.) IBMUSER

When you are logged on to TSO, you can enter

HEL UTILS

to see which TSO command processors and utilities are set up on your system.

Enjoy your private hercules mainframe