VMSPOOL EDIT seems to stop/hang when file has more than 1 million records

Products

• VM:Spool

Issue/Introduction

Currently running VM:SPOOL 1.8 RS1510 on a 2nd level zVM 6.4 system.You needed to bring in a fairly large console (1,151,143 records) as part of a trace to send out to another vendor.

1. The first attempt with 64m failed.
2. You went to 256m and the file opened - but stopped at 1000000.
3. So, you bumped it up to 512m but it still stopped at 1000000.
4. A quick review of the VMSPOOL doc did not show a limit (other than virtual storage).

Environment

Trying to use VMSPOOL to EDIT a console spool file with 1,151,143 records.

Cause

Hang or PRG005 abend when trying to EDIT large console with 1,151,143 records.

Resolution

Apply VM:Spool PTF SO06397.

Additional Information

• The VMSPOOL EDIT macro has an internal default setting of "FOR 1000000" (one million) as the number of records to pull into the EDIT session. Therefore, if the spool file is larger than that (say 1,237,522 records) and you want to edit the entire file you must specify something like VMSPOOL EDIT _user_ _spid_ ( FOR 2000000 ... or a "FOR" value something equal or greater than the spool file record count. 
• Also, for these large files, EDIT can take a considerable amount of time (a few minutes) to present the data in the EDIT session. Unlike BROWSE, EDIT reads the entire spool file (up to the FOR value) before presenting data back to the requesting user's session.
• Also, in testing we found that the problem didn't occur if the EDIT command was the FIRST activity performed on the VMSPOOL server (no other BROWSE, EDIT, etc. commands had been issued) after initialization. However, if any other commands had been issued, the EDIT always got the ABEND at some point while processing the EDIT command. In particular, the file used using was a NETDATA file.