As the trace buffer fills up, it is spooled to the CTRACE writer queue. When the buffer is full, a second buffer is obtained, allowing the first buffer to complete being spooled to the CTRACE writer. When the second buffer is full, tracing wraps back to the first buffer and begins overwriting the oldest records.

The second buffer is not contiguous to the first buffer, and therefore is not formatable by IPCS CTRACE formatter. The consequence is that you cannot view the most recent trace records if they are in the second buffer. After the change to SSF trace, the latest records are spooled to the CTRACE writer queue, and therefore the CTRACE writer data set contains all the trace records.

If you take a console dump, the trace buffer is not spooled to the CTRACE writer queue. Therefore, the CTRACE writer data set does not contain the most recent trace records. This is important because the second buffer is not contiguous to the first buffer, and therefore is not formatable by IPCS CTRACE formatter. This means that you cannot view the most recent trace records if they are in the second buffer. After the SSF trace change, the trace formatter will be pointed at the last buffer. This should resolve the problem because the other buffer (if there is one) has already been spooled to the CTRACE writer queue.