ITM Agent Insights: IBM Tivoli Monitoring Agent for i5/OS job may not end normally

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In some cases, Tivoli Monitoring Agent for i5/OS would not end gracefully during shutdown of the agent. This is more visible when extended RAS1 logging is enabled. When this condition happens,  the Agent job CT_AGENT ends abnormally after 10 minutes with the automatic execution of ENDJOBABN system command by the i5/OS or IBM i system. You might be required to execute ENDJOBABN system command to manually end the CT_AGENT job after waiting for 10 minutes.

This can also happen with the basic trace setting of KBB_RAS1=ERROR. The problem is more severe if extended traces similar to KBB_RAS1=ERROR (UNIT:KA4 ALL) (UNIT:KRA ALL) is enabled and data collection for many attributes is enabled. The data collection can be because of the situations and historical data collection that has been configured and distributed to the agent.

The work around to this issue is to disable tracing by setting NONE for KBB_RAS1 parameter.

Here are the steps to configure the agent to write no trace other than the log header information.

1. Update the trace parameter KBB_RAS1 to KBB_RAS1=NONE in QAUTOTMP/KMSPARM (KBBENV) file.
   Comment any other KBB_RAS1 lines by adding * at the beginning of the line.
2. Stop and start the Agent.
3. End the Agent using option 3 of GO OMA menu. QAUTOMON/ENDOMA command can also be used to end the Agent.
4. Verify if the Agent job ended normally or abnormally.
5. If the Agent ended normally, the problem documented in this blog is applicable.

This is a known issue with permanent restrictions in the current Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Agent(TEMA) code. This is documented using the Doc APAR IV15081(TEBS: UNIT AND FILTER LIMITS TO RAS1 TRACE).
The APAR documentation http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1IV15081 provides more details on this issue. Please see APAR description for two workarounds to rectify this issue.

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