What causes this abend: SYBABE296E HIDRO INTERNAL ABEND "EC 5DF"

Products

• VM:Backup for z/VM
• VM:Backup High-Speed Disaster Recovery Option (HiDRO)

Issue/Introduction

Our Daily backup from last night issued a RC=16. SYBABE296E HIDRO INTERNAL ABEND "EC 5DF" 
 
What is the cause of this abend or error message? Did it abend?

Environment

z/VSE an level
VM:Backup (HIDRO) 2.8 and above 

Resolution

The "EC 5DF" indicates the FileSpace integraty was lost (the FileSpace 
changed) during the course of the backup. HiDRO holds the FileSpace catalog 
open during the backup which prevents this from happening. 


The EC 5DF indicates HiDRO detected the FileSpace being backed up is 
corrupted ... the Catalog Data Pointer Blocks read from the catalog for 
the FileSpace when the backup started no longer match the data in the 
FileSpace when the Pointer Blocks are re-read from what was retrived to 
back up the data. 

This will happen if the FileSpace has changed after the catlog information 
is read by HiDRO and before the FilesSpace backup completes. 

However, this should never happen. HiDRO now opens the FileSpace catalog, 
and leaves the catalog open until the FileSpace backup is finished. SFS/IBM 
guarantees that holding the FileSpace catalog open while the backup is 
running will create a snapshot of the data and pointer blocks until the 
FileSpace Catalog is closed; the FileSpace will not change, any updates will 
be queued until the FileSpace Catalog is closed. 

The fact that the EC 5DF occurred indicates that either the FileSpace was 
actually corrupted (which does not appear to be the case because when the 
backup was rerun, the FileSpace was successfully backed up), or that 
somehow the integrity of the FileSpace was not maintained while HiDRO had 
the FileSpace Catalog help open. 
 
 This is theoretically not a HiDRO problem, but rather a potential SFS problem.