When you are using the Storage Management Subsystem, you can use the SYS% conversion facility to allow you to apply PTFs (program temporary fixes) or other maintenance to all sharing systems from one system. For a complete description of the SYS% facility, see Using the SYS% Conversion Facility.

If the SYS% facility has not been activated, you can use MODIFY CATALOG,SYS%ON to activate it. When you are finished applying the PTFs, you can deactivate the facility with MODIFY CATALOG,SYS%OFF. The current setting of SYS% (on or off) can be determined using MODIFY CATALOG,REPORT.

Before you can use the SYS% facility to orient jobs to system data sets on shared systems, you must define appropriate alias names for each master catalog.

For example, assume you need to apply a fix to SYS1.LINKLIB on three systems: SYSTEMA, SYSTEMB, and SYSTEMC. The SMP/E job runs on SYSTEMA.

Each master catalog must be connected to the other master catalogs as a user catalog, and assigned a four character alias whose first three letters are SYS. The fourth character can be any valid character. In this case, SYSTEMB has the alias SYSB, and SYSTEMC has the alias SYSC. These aliases are defined in the master catalog for SYSTEMA.

The SMP/E job can then be directed to apply the fix to SYS1.LINKLIB (on SYSTEMA), SYSB.LINKLIB (on SYSTEMB), and SYSC.LINKLIB (on SYSTEMC).

When allocating SYSB.LINKLIB, the system uses the SYSB alias to orient the catalog request to SYSTEMB's master catalog. SYSTEMB's master catalog is then searched for SYSB.LINKLIB. Finding no data set by that name, SYSTEMB's master catalog is again searched for SYS1.LINKLIB, which it finds. The job proceeds using SYSTEMB's SYS1.LINKLIB.

The same procedure is then used to allocate SYSC.LINKLIB.

See Restrictions on Using SYS% Conversion for restrictions on using the SYS% facility.