fcfilter Command

Purpose

Locates and displays any First Failure Data Capture (FFDC) Failure Identifiers in a file or in standard input. More than one file may be specified.

Syntax

/usr/sbin/rsct/bin/fcfilter [ file_name ] [. . . ]

Description

This commands scans any files listed as arguments for First Failure Data Capture (FFDC) Failure Identifiers. If a file name is not provided as an argument, this command examines standard input for FFDC Failure Identifiers. If an FFDC Failure Identifier is detected, fcfilter displays the identifier to standard output on its own line.

fcfilter can be used by scripts to extract FFDC Failure Identifiers returned by child processes via the standard error device.

If fcfilter detects more than one FFDC Failure Identifier in the input, the command will display all FFDC Failure Identifiers found, each one on a separate output line.

Parameters

file_name

The name of the file to be searched for an FFDC Failure Identifier. More than one file may be provided. If a file name is not provided, fcfilter reads from standard input.

Exit Status

fcfilter returns the following integer status codes upon completion:

0

fcfilter completed its execution. This exit status does not necessarily mean that any FFDC Failure Identifiers were detected.

> 0

fcfilter was interrupted or stopped by a signal. The exit status is the integer value of the signal that stopped the command.

Examples

The FFDC Failure Identifier is represented by a base-64 value, read from right to left. Each dot represents a leading zero. To obtain the list of all FFDC Failure Identifiers generated by a run of the command mycmd:

 mycmd 2> /tmp/errout
 fcfilter /tmp/errout
/.00...JMr4r.p9E.xRXQ7....................
/.00...JMr4r.pMx.xRXQ7....................

To obtain the FFDC Failure Identifier from a child process in a parent script, the script can use the fcfilter command as follows:

RESULTS=$(mychild 2> /tmp/errout)
if (($? != 0))               # mychild ended in failure, get FFDC ID
then
    cat /tmp/errout │ fcfilter │ read FIRST_FFDCID
else
    rm -f /tmp/errout
fi

Implementation Specifics

This command is part of the Reliable Scalable Cluster Technology (RSCT) fileset.