Endevor abend U0133 reasons and ways to solve

Products

• Endevor
• Endevor Natural Integration
• Endevor - ECLIPSE Plugin
• Endevor - Enterprise Workbench
• CA 2E

Issue/Introduction

During processing, Endevor issues an user completion code 133 (U0133 abend) with a message similar to:

BC1PBM30: F000 ABEND CODE=E999 NUMBER=0133

Environment

- Running Endevor in either foreground or background

- Performing any operation that involves reading a sequential file

- The input file has RECFM=V or VB

Cause

A U0133 abend is issued by the Endevor low/level I/O routines during read processing of a sequential file having variable-length records.
It indicates that an unexpected RDW (record descriptor word) has been found in the input data. The unexpected condition can be either:

A negative record length, which should never occur unless the file is really corrupted

A record length larger than expected, meaning that the input record cannot be placed in the designated buffer

Although the abend causes the job step to terminate, the input file MIGHT still be usable. This would happen if it contains a record or block which is longer than expected.

Resolution

Step 1 - To check whether the input file can still be read, have IEBGENER utility process it with the following JCL:

//STEP1 EXEC PGM=IEBGENER
//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=*
//SYSIN DD DUMMY
//SYSUT1 DD DISP=SHR,DSN=your.dataset,DCB=(RECFM=VB,LRECL=32756,BLKSIZE=32760)
//SYSUT2 DUMMY,DCB=(RECFM=VB,LRECL=32756,BLKSIZE=32760)

Note the DCB parameter which sets the maximum values for block size and record length.

If this JCL still fails, the file is really corrupted and cannot be recovered.

If the JCL works, then:

- If the abend arose during batch processing, continue with step 2

- If the abend arose during foreground processing, continue with step 3

Step 2 - Try to have Endevor read the file it by specifying DCB=(RECFM=VB,LRECL=32756,BLKSIZE=32760) in the input DD statement. This method has been seen to work in customer issues.

In some cases, however, this method will still fail because Endevor might ignore the DCB specified in the JCL and use the DCB attributes set in the VTOC for the disk file instead.

Therefore, if step 2 still fails, try step 3.

Step 3 - Change SYSUT2 DD in the JCL from step 1 above so that, instead of a DUMMY dataset, it creates an actual file with DCB=(RECFM=VB,LRECL=32756,BLKSIZE=32760).

Endevor should be able to read the resulting file without problem.