[Info-vax] Monitor beginning and ending dates

[Rich Jordan]

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 8:30:05 PM UTC-6, Tad Winters wrote:
> On 3/9/2021 3:49 PM, Rich Jordan via Info-vax wrote: 
> > Its embarrassing to ask but I'm out of time to play with this. I have a monitor data file from an alphaserver that collected from mid-day March 5th until mid-day March 8th. I want to generate summaries for a 1 hour period each night when backup is running, and I'll need to do a few more of these monitors and analyses in the future. 
> > 
> > HPE VMS Alpha V8.4, patched up to about 2 years ago, tried viewing both on the Alpha and on an Integrity box running VMS V8.3-1h1 (patched up to date) with, as expected, identical results. 
> > 
> > Viewing them is not an issue. /beginning=5-mar-2021:23:00:00 gets me right there. But any attempt to generate a summary with no interactive output errors out if an ending time is supplied: 
> > 
> > %MONITOR-E-BEGNLEND, beginning time not earlier than ending time 
> > 
> > Doesn't matter what I put in the end time, if it is an absolute time or a combination or just a delta time it never gets past the initial parsing error. 
> > 
> > So is it possible to do something equivalent to this and have it work? 
> > 
> > $ MONITOR/INPUT=MYMON.DAT - 
> > /NODISPLAY/SUMMARY=MONSUM.SUM - 
> > ALL_CLASSES,DISK/ITEM=ALL - 
> > /BEGIN="5-MAR-2021:23:00:00" /END="6-MAR-2021:00:00:00" 
> > 
> > Tried this with various combinations of absolute and delta times (like 05-MAR-2021:00:00+0-23:00:00) for begin or end time, mixing absolute and delta times. Any attempt to add an end time causes the error. 
> > 
> > So what is the secret sauce? Right now I'm thinking of having submon run at 10:50PM each night, then have it submit a second job to kill the monitor process at midnight plus 5 minutes and just create a new monitor data file each night with a forced end time so I can get a summary of the whole data file. 
> > 
> > Thanks
> I've not messed with MONITOR in a long time, but I don't recall putting 
> quotes around datetime. Have you tried without the quotes?


Tad wins the internet, testing his suggestion lead to a proper diagnosis.  My model for the command was using combination time time, and delta time involved calculations (and if a plus sign is used) must be quoted.  I just changed the entries without removing the quotes (they don't hurt the 'beginning' qualifier if used), and I did nearly all the testing on the V8.4 Alpha but was local on the V8.3-1h1 Integrity when I tested today.

The absolute times in the commands worked on the V8.3-1h1 Integrity with or without quotes but both still fail on the Alpha UNLESS the specified end time is 'today' or a time that correlates with today via delta time.  Put in an absolute previous date and it fails with the BEGNLEND error.

MONITOR/INPUT=MYMON.DAT/NODISPLAY/SUMMARY=MONSUM-5.SUM all_classes,disk/item=all /begin=06-mar-2021:01:00 /end=09-mar-2021:02:00
works on the V8.3-1h1 Integrity but fails on the V8.4 Alpha, with or without the quotes on the times

MONITOR/INPUT=MYMON.DAT/NODISPLAY/SUMMARY=MONSUM-5.SUM all_classes,disk/item=all /begin=06-mar-2021:01:00 /end=10-mar-2021:02:00
works on both systems with or without quoted times

"TODAY" or "TODAY+1" or other variants works as an end time but YESTERDAY or YESTERDAY used in a combination time fails with the error.

I think this is an HP - induced bug in V8.4 monitor.

If someone out there has VSI versions available to test, it might be interesting to know if this problem has been corrected.


Thanks
Rich