What does it mean when dpmon returns code 251

[Former Member]

All,

We are using high availability functionality in our SAP landscape and as part of the architecture, we have a script that checks the system availability with the command "dpmon NR=85 -p". If the return code is "0", everything is fine and things go on. If its non-zero, the HACMP will restat the server. The system in question is an XI 3.0 system.

The problem now is, dpmon is exiting with return code 251 and it is causing the HACMP to restart a perfectly running SAP system. We can tune the script to ignore 251, but we really want to know what the code means and whether it is benign or not. If it is benign, we will probably tune the script and if its not, we will try to fix it.

Any help in deciphering this code or point us to look at the return codes for dpmon would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers

Sri.

[tim_buchholz]

Dear Sri,

Mark is right, the return code indicates a timeout for the attempted ping. The default timeout used is 500ms. You can override this with the '-T <timeout>' command line option. In short, you might want to run

dpmon NR=85 -p -T <timeout>

where <timeout> would be the time span in ms that you want to allow the dispatcher to send back a pong. I would go for at least 10s or probably 1min (meaning <timeout> being either 10000 or 60000). It is likely that there might be time spans where the dispatcher is not able to answer within 500ms. You also might want to check the dev_disp file for anything that points into the direction of a problem with name resolution.

Best Regards,

Tim

[Former Member]

Hello Sri,

This return code you're asking for results from the NI return codes. As they're all negative (see nixx.h) the result is given by

256 - RC

for NITIMEOUT (-5) you get 251.

This is part of SAP source code. You can find with the TREX search by entering 'nixx.h'.

Section of //bas/BIN/src/include/nixx.h:

-

---

142 #define NIESERV_USED -4 /**< service number (port) already

143 * in use */

144 #define NIETIMEOUT -5 /**< operation timed out */

145 #define NIECONN_BROKEN -6 /**< connection broken or closed by

146 * communication partner */

-

---

Regards, Mark