Managing recovery fault recording data set access

If Fault Analyzer fails to record an application abend due to exception conditions, such as insufficient virtual storage or an abend in Fault Analyzer, it then attempts to capture the abend situation with an MVS SDUMP (SVC dump) or MVS IEATDUMP (transaction dump or TDUMP). This process creates a separate dump data set, which is linked with the recovery fault recording history file fault entry. With this recovery process, Fault Analyzer is normally able to provide interactive reanalysis of the initial application abend in spite of the exception condition Fault Analyzer encountered during the capture. The linked SDUMP or TDUMP provides the storage data that would normally have been recorded in the 'minidump' section of the fault entry if the capture had not had the exception.

Fault Analyzer controls the use of RFR SDUMP or TDUMP with XFACILIT security profiles. If the access to the SDUMP or TDUMP XFACILIT security profiles are not available or not defined, then no security violations are generated. This lack of violations is because Fault Analyzer checks the required user access first, and if not available does not issue the associated SDUMP or TDUMP request, although TDUMP is still used if the user has ALTER access to the TDUMP data set profile but no XFACILIT access.

Fault Analyzer tries to use SDUMP as the preferred dump type, and only if the necessary SDUMP access authorization is not available for the abending user ID, is the TDUMP access authorization checked. The dump process used by SDUMP is faster than the TDUMP process.

If the Fault Analyzer XFACILIT process described here is used as the SDUMP or TDUMP control of its RFR dumps, then the actual SDUMP or TDUMP can not be read or deleted by a normal end user, except through analysis or deletion of the fault entry it is linked to. For example, in a case where the 'payroll' application might have its own history file that general users don't have read access to, then this XFACILIT process means that any RFR SDUMPs or TDUMPS for 'payroll' are restricted from general users because they can't access the fault entries.

The XFACILIT access requirements for RFR SDUMP or TDUMP differ as explained in the following.