Hints and tips for using WebSphere MQ Managed File Transfer

Here are some suggestions to help you to make best use of WebSphere® MQ Managed File Transfer:

• If you change the agent.properties file, stop and restart the agent to pick up the changes.
• If you start a file transfer and there is no sign of transfer progress and no errors are reported, check that the source agent is running. If the transfer is shown but does not progress, check that the destination agent is also running. You can check the current state of agents in the agent log or verify that the agent is active with an ftePingAgent command.
• When you cancel an individual transfer using the fteCancelTransfer command, you can use either the source or destination agent in the -agentName parameter. However, when you delete a transfer schedule using the fteDeleteScheduledTransfer command, you must use the source agent name in the -agentName parameter.
• When you create a file transfer the source and destination file paths, either absolute or relative, are significant only on the source and destination agents. The system and directory that the fteCreateAgent command is issued from has no relevance to the file being transferred.
• Your default environment setup might not be able to fully support WebSphere MQ Managed File Transfer, particularly if you are running multiple concurrent transfers. If an agent has an error indicating it has run out of memory, check and update the following parameters as required:
  • For UNIX-type platforms: run the command: ulimit -m 1048576 (or approximately 1 GB). This maximum resident set size is enough to allow a maximum of 25 concurrent transfers (25 concurrent transfers is the default for the maximum number of transfers for an agent).
  • For all platforms: set the FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES environment variable as follows: FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES="-Xmx1024M"

  If you want to allow numbers of concurrent transfers greater than the maximum default of 25, use larger sizes for ulimit and FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES than those suggested.

  Note: For Connect:Direct® bridge agents the default for the maximum number of concurrent transfers is 5.
• When you use WebSphere MQ Managed File Transfer to transfer files in text mode between different platforms, the default file encoding of the source platform might not be supported by the destination platform. This causes a transfer to fail with the following error:

  BFGIO0058E: The transfer source encoding xxx is illegal or for an unsupported character set.

  You can resolve this error by setting the source encoding to one that is supported by the destination platform using an environment variable. Set the FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES system environment variable on the source system as follows: FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES="-Dfile.encoding=xxx", where xxx is an encoding supported by the destination platform. For example, if you are transferring files in text mode from a Sun Solaris platform to a different platform and the source locale is set to "ja", set FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES as follows: FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES="-Dfile.encoding=EUC-JP". If the source locale is set to "ja_JP.PCK", set FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES as follows: FTE_JVM_PROPERTIES="-Dfile.encoding=Shift_JIS".

  You can also resolve this error for an individual transfer by using the -sce parameter when you start a new transfer. For more information, see the topic fteCreateTransfer (create new file transfer).