WebReport/400 Frequently Asked Questions

Index:

• How can I trace what is happening with outbound Email on my system?
  
• I notice some SMTP server jobs that seem to be stuck in a loop trying to send E-mail to bad destination addresses, is there a way to stop this?
  
• Email reports from WebReport/400 arrive showing the wrong time of day, how can I correct this?
  
• WebReport/400 places HTML documents in source files or in shared folder files, but I need to place them into the IFS (Integrated File Sysytem). How can I use WebReport/400 to do this?
  

We are often asked how mail can be traced on the AS/400 when things appear to be configured correctly but the mail is just not going out. We have discovered that OS/400 includes a journaling feature for SMTP that you can activate using the following procedure. Journaling adds overhead to processing on your system, so we recommend that once you activate it, that you go back and deactivate it once you have traced your problem.

To set up SMTP journaling and look at the journal information:

1. Change the SMTP attributes by keying the command CHGSMTPA and pressing the F4 key to prompt it.
2. Roll up to the second panel and change the "Journal" parameter to *YES.
3. Use WebReport/400 to send a report via Email.
4. On an AS/400 command line, enter the command: ADDLIBLE QTCP
5. Enter the command:
   

   DSPJRN JRN(QZMF) OUTPUT(*OUTFILE) OUTFILE(QUSRSYS/ZMFSTUFF)
   OUTMBR(MAR2) ENTDTALEN(512)

6. To view the SMTP journal, type the following command:
   

   DSPPFM FILE(QUSRSYS/ZMFSTUFF) MBR(MAR2)

7. Press F20 to see the journal-specific information

According to information found at the IBM support website, the SMTP server can be set to destroy distributions that it cannot process. How SMTP does this depends on the existence and contents of a single-character, user-defined data area called QTMSCLEAN in the QUSRSYS library. The character in this data area indicates the extent of mail control block clean-up:

• An uppercase or lowercase c in this data area indicates a cold start was requested to free all mail control blocks.
• Any other character causes a warm start to free only the first floater mail control block found. A floater is an MCB that was dequeued but was not fully processed or failed processing when SMTP ended (for whatever reason).

Since a warm start frees only a single MCB, it may be necessary to stop SMTP, create the data area, and start SMTP more than one time to get to the MCB that is causing the problem. If there are a large number of MCBs, a cold start may be the fastest way to correct the problem.

To create the QTMSCLEAN data area, use the Create Data Area (CRTDTAARA) command as follows:

CRTDTAARA DTAARA(QUSRSYS/QTMSCLEAN) TYPE(*CHAR) +

     LEN(1) VALUE('X') AUT(*ALL) 

On the AS/400, there is a system value that controls the time shown on Email messages sent by WebReport/400. The system value is named QUTCOFFSET and it contains the Coordinated Universal Time Offet value. As shipped from the factory, this is set to zero so all Emails are time stamped as if you were located in Greenwich, England (as in Greenwich mean time).

To adjust this value to work correctly on your system, change it to reflect the difference in time between where you are located and Greenwich Mean Time. For US customers, Eastern Time would result in a value setting of -05:00. For Pacific Time, the offset value should be -08:00, and so on for other time zones.

Beginning with WebReport/400 Release 4.01, this function is supported directly from the WREPORT command. If you have an earlier version of WebReport/400 installed, use the following instructions:

WebReport/400 can be used to convert your report into HTML. You can then execute a simple CL command to move that converted HTML file into the IFS on your system. The CL command will also take care of EBCDIC to ASCII conversion.

First, process the report to a source physical file. There is a source file in library WEBREPORT named WEBSRC that you can use for this.

Then, process the following command to move the source member to the IFS converting it to ASCII code in the process. This example assumes that you are using the above mentioned source file with a member named REPORT1. The example then assumes that you want to move the report to a directory name WEB under your HOME directory in the IFS with a file name of REPORT1.HTM.

CPYTOSTMF FROMMBR( qsys.lib/webreport.lib/websrc.file/report1.mbr') +

 TOSTMF( /home/web/report1.htm') DBFCCSID(37) STMFCODPAG(437)

Phone: (914) 241-7233 Fax: (914) 241-9140

E-mail your questions or suggestions: Support@Kisco.com