Establishing Host Sessions › Understanding Console Management › z/VM Consoles › Message Handling for z/VM Consoles

Message Handling for z/VM Consoles

CA Automation Point treats each line on the z/VM console as a message, with each line containing no more than 132 characters. Messages that must be split for display purposes are not spliced back together for CA Automation Point processing.

To determine whether a session is running on a z/VM console, CA Automation Point looks for one of the following status indicators in the last line of the screen:

• RUNNING
• HOLDING
• MORE
• VM READ
• CP READ
• NOT ACCEPTED

State scripts are not commonly used with z/VM sessions. If the status is NOT ACCEPTED, CA Automation Point executes a z/VM state script for the session, if you have defined one.

To define a VM state script

1. Create the VM.SCR file in the %AP_SITE%\MyFiles directory that contains the actions to take for the NOT ACCEPTED condition. (A sample vm.scr file is not provided because it is rarely used.)
2. In Configuration Manager, navigate to the session definition panel for the z/VM session (Expert Interface, Automation, Session Definition Sets, Sessions, Automation Point Session Definition).
3. Select Customize Scripts.  

   The Customize Scripts dialog appears.

4. Assign this new state script (VM.SCR) to the z/VM state.

When CA Automation Point encounters the RUNNING status indicator, it is in a valid automation state. If the z/VM logon screen at your site displays the indicator, CA Automation Point processes the screen data through rules. In such a case, INIT or state scripts cannot log on to z/VM, although you could use CA Automation Point rules to execute a logon script.

Before it processes each message from the z/VM screen, CA Automation Point checks for the following conditions:

• If the screen contains either the "HOLDING" or the "MORE..." status indicator, CA Automation Point automatically issues a PA2 keystroke to clear the screen.
• If the console is not in z/VM state or any other defined state, CA Automation Point starts the INIT state script, which tries to reinitialize the session.

CA Automation Point processes all messages on the screen. When it reaches the last line of the screen, it looks for the HOLDING or MORE status indicators. If the screen contains either indicator, it rechecks the status of the session.