Deleting XCF note pad structures

CAUTION:

Take care when considering whether to delete a note pad structure. Deleting a note pad structure causes ALL note pads hosted in the structure to fail, so you should do so only when no note pads are defined in the structure. Use the DISPLAY XCF,NOTEPAD,STRNAME=hostname command to determine whether there are note pads defined in the structure.

If necessary, you can use the IXCDELNP utility to delete an XCF note pad. Do not use the utility unless you understand the use of the note pad by its exploiting application and any adverse effects that the application might experience as a result.

The note pad structure is a persistent structure that you can delete with only the SETXCF FORCE command or the IXLFORCE macro, or it is deleted internally by XCF in a failure scenario. Before you can force the deletion of the structure, you must wait for XCF to disconnect from the note pad structure. If the structure has any connectors, the force command is rejected. There is no command to disconnect XCF. XCF automatically disconnects from a note pad structure if there are no active note pad connectors or activities that are related to note pads hosted in the structure (including D XCF,NOTEPAD) for a time period of approximately fifteen minutes.

Tip: Issue the D XCF,NP command, which induces activity, consistently from the same system that already has a connection to the structure. This ensures that activity occurs on only one system and connections are therefore not created or extended unnecessarily.

To ensure that forced structure deletions succeed, ensure that you first understand what causes XCF to establish connections to these structures and when XCF will disconnect from the structures. Then plan the forced deletions for after XCF disconnects. The following steps outline a good procedure for successfully forcing deletions:

Issue the SETXCF FORCE,STR,STRNAME=strname command. If it succeeds, you are done. If it is rejected because the structure still has connections, continue with these steps.
Issue the DISPLAY XCF,STR,STRNAME=strname command to determine which systems have connections.
Issue the DISPLAY XCF,NOTEPAD command to determine which note pads have connections.
Shut down the appropriate applications.
Try deleting the structures again.

The XCF note pad structure can only be used by the sysplex in which the structure was allocated and formatted. If the sysplex is re-IPLed, or if XCF detects that the note pad structure belongs to a different sysplex, it automatically deletes the note pad structure (along with all the note pads hosted by it) and allocates a new instance of the structure.

The following references contain more information:

See Deletion utility for XCF note pads for information about the IXCDELNP utility.
See z/OS MVS System Commands for information about the DISPLAY XCF and the SETXCF commands.
See z/OS MVS Programming: Sysplex Services Reference for information about the IXLFORCE macro.