IMPORTANT AND TIME SENSITIVE - Dollar Universe 5.x Scheduler Issue

[Rajeev Kumar]

Dollar Universe Workload Automation Customers,

READ CAREFULLY IF YOU ARE RUNNING DOLLAR UNIVERSE 5.x IN PRODUCTION 

We have been made aware by some customers about a limitation in the scheduler functionality of Dollar Universe 5.x (5.0, 5.3, 5.6 etc.) versions that can significantly impact the execution of scheduled jobs after December 31, 2020. This courtesy post is for you to understand the impact of this issue and plan the remediation action accordingly in order to avoid any business disruptions.

A knowledge base article, summarizing the issue and possible workarounds, has been published here – https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleId=205471

The end of service for Dollar Universe 5.x versions was announced in 2015. We strongly recommend that you plan to upgrade your Dollar Universe 5.x installations to the latest version as soon as possible.

This issue does not affect Dollar Universe 6.x versions.

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Dollar Universe Workload Automation Product Team
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[Geoffroy_KESSLER_8766]

Hello,

We will test the script attached on our $U V5.6 concerned (Linux, HPUX and AIX) and we will keep you posted.

​One question please : Can we not use the binaries "uxwak" or "uxwakatm" instead of stop and start calculator automat?

Thank you in advance for you answer.

Geoffroy Kessler

[Adrian Fresno Menendez]

Hello Geoffroy,

during our testing in 5.6 Windows/Linux, we found out that the commands do NOT work and they don't wake up the calculator.

This is why we found out that the safest workaround is restarting the calculator every minute.

Thanks

Adrian

[Eric Delawoevre]

#dollaruniverse
Some better hints:

Into scripts

• for DU_TMP_SCRIPT_NAME var , better is to use a remanent directory : $UXMGR/tmp_script.txt instead of $U_TMP_PATH (windows var within %..%)
• redirect the crontabs executions to files [UNIX]

     ....uxsetenv_wake_cal_lan > dev/null  2>&1 TO REPLACE by ....uxsetenv_wake_cal_lan > ${U_TMP_PATH}/${DU_CRON_ENTRY}.log  2>&1

• rights on run-parts is false. Dont forget to have the run-part on root:root with mod 644 [LINUX]

chmod 644 /etc/cron.d/${DU_CRON_ENTRY}

• remove any dedicated FLA before adding a new (in case of re-xecute the script):

${UXEXE}/uxdlt fla upr=${UPR_NAME} mu=${MU_NAME} nseq=*

DUNUMLANC=`${UXEXE}/uxadd fla ...

[same equivalent for Windows]

• Schedule task recreate (in case of reexecution) [WINDOWS]

schtasks /create /F ...

• Windows submission is quite different and should be invoked by the admin account . You can focus on your $U admin (technically answer of command sc qc Univ_<DU_ADMIN_USER>. So leaving the WTSK_USER to <empty> is interresting to avoid the /RU arg

set WTSK_USER=Administrator

set WTSK_USER_ARG=

IF NOT "%WTSK_USER%" == "" set WTSK_USER_ARG=/RU %WTSK_USER%

...

schtasks /create ... ... /RU %WTSK_USER% TO REPLACE by %WTSK_USER_ARG%

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Main director
SynApps
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[SupportAutomation AptaSolutions]

Further testing has found that this bug does not impact 5.0 nodes running on OpenVMS (this was the last version of $U 5.x built for OpenVMS). Since the Launcher and Calculator algorithms are coded in COBOL for all platforms, this may mean that Dollar Universe 5.0 on other platforms is not impacted (and maybe even 5.1, which was the last 5.x version delivered for OS400). We no longer have the environments nor the binaries to test these combinations of platforms and versions, but thought it was worth mentioning. 

Best of luck applying the workaround for anyone still running 5.x. And Happy Holidays!

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Regards,

Domenico Cotugno
Support Automation Apta
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