A bug exists in the IBM z/VSE Supervisor which can lead to a HARDWAIT FFF occurring after an I/O error occurs. This HARDWAIT FFF is the result of a program check in the SGLOCK routine of the z/VSE Supervisor.
When running file transfers using CA XCOM for z/VSE, the error can be triggered by a LIOCS error such as "NO FORMAT 1 LABEL FOUND". Specifying BLKSIZE parameters that are incompatible with the VTOC entry for a
dataset can also trigger the HARDWAIT FFF.
This problem exists in multiple versions of z/VSE (including 5.1 and 5.2) in addition to versions of z/VSE which are no longer supported by IBM.
IBM APAR DY47595 (or its equivalent) must be applied to the z/VSE operating system. Note that this APAR was reported and fixed for z/VSE 5.2. Obtaining a suitable version for other levels of z/VSE may require opening a PMR with
IBM.