HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
When You Run a Job
This last section on jobs is devoted to points of interest, rather than
to the steps involved in creating and starting jobs. Using Your System
includes several chapters that guide you through the creation of job
files and starting jobs.
At the start
You may leave the decision of when to execute your job to the computer.
Or, within limits, you may increase the priority of your job in the job
queue in order to have it execute sooner.
Alternatively, you may specify a time (a time of day, a day of the week,
a week of the month, even another year) for your job's execution. And at
that time, if the computer has resources available, it will execute your
job.
The command to start a job executes almost immediately, and, just as
quickly, the computer returns control of your terminal to you.
Before returning control of your terminal to you, the computer will
display the job identification number assigned to your job. It might be
J345, meaning that yours is job number 345 in a sequence of jobs that
were launched since the job counter was reset.
This done, you may continue with other work. You have only to wait for
the job to execute and finish and then examine the job listing on your
printer.
________________________________________________________________________
| |
|Worth Remembering |
| |
|Record the job identification number of your job. While the job is |
|running, this number is your link with the job. You may want to do |
|several things that are possible if you know the job number. Among |
|them are: |
| |
| |
| |
| * monitor the job status (SHOWJOB) |
| |
| * suspend the job (BREAKJOB) |
| |
| * resume the job (after suspending it) RESUMEJOB |
| |
| * terminate the job (ABORTJOB) |
| |
| * obtain status reports on any spool files associated with your |
| job (LISTSPF) |
________________________________________________________________________
These and other commands, along with the JOB command, are discussed in
greater detail in Using Your System and in the MPE/iX Help Facility.
Your job--your list of commands for execution--is transformed into an
input spool file and, like all other input spool files, waits its turn to
execute. It may wait a few seconds, a few minutes, or even a few hours
before executing. In the meantime, you may continue with other work on
your terminal.
Job priority
Jobs are executed in the order of their priority, and priorities range
from 1 (the lowest) to 13, with HIPRI (the highest) reserved for your
system manager or system operator. If you do not specify a priority when
you create your job file, your job will be assigned a priority of 8,
which is just above the halfway point in the range of priorities.
If two jobs have equal priority, the job that was started earlier takes
precedence. Here, "started" means that a job was sent to the computer
for processing by using the STREAM command.
Getting over the fence
Your system manager or system operator will use the JOBFENCE command to
set the priority limits for jobs. If the jobfence is set at 7 and your
job has a priority of 8, it will eventually execute, but only after jobs
having a priority of 9 or greater have executed. If your job has a
priority equal to or less than 7 (the same as the jobfence), it will not
run.
If the jobfence is set at HIPRI, no jobs except those given HIPRI
priority will execute. Only a system administrator or a system operator
is able to assign HIPRI to a job.
JOBFENCE gives your system manager or system operator a means of
controlling the flow of job traffic on your system.
When you create a job, you may use the JOB command and its ;INPRI keyword
to increase the input priority of your job, even before you launch it.
Decreasing the input priority to 1 insures that the job will never
run--occasionally useful if you want to put a job "on hold."
You may use the SPOOLF command with the ;ALTER and ;PRI= parameters to
increase (or decrease) the output priority of the spool files that are
generated by your job.
________________________________________________________________________
|It is tempting to give your jobs (or output spool files) the highest |
|possible priority and race to the head of the line. |
| |
|Some jobs truly do deserve higher priority--but only some. |
________________________________________________________________________
Scheduling
The STREAM command includes the keywords ;AT, ;DAY, ;DATE, and ;IN. These
keywords permit you to set the start time for a job at a particular time,
on a particular day, on a particular date, or in a number of days, hours,
or minutes (from now).
Errors and your job listing
If there are errors in your job file--or if the computer cannot complete
an instruction in the job file--the computer will display on your video
terminal nothing more than a message telling you that your job terminated
in an error.
[REV BEG]
During a session, the computer displays error messages on your terminal
($STDLIST for a session). During a job, however, $STDLIST is redirected
to the printer connected to your MPE/iX system, and that is where your
error listing appears.[REV END]
This redirection of information is, in fact, quite sensible. Your
computer has no way of knowing whether you will be at your terminal when
your job executes, whether your terminal will even be turned on, or
whether you will have gone home for the evening.
To find the source of an error in your job, you must go to your printer
and examine the job listing. The job listing is the printed report that
your job delivers whether the job completed successfully or failed at
some step along the way. It gives you confirmation of each command in
the job, telling you whether the command executed successfully or
failed--and if it failed, what error caused the failure.