REGION UNAVAILABLE, ERROR CODE=20

CICS fan · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 1:48 am

Hello All,

We have a JCL with multiple steps which runs monthly. One of the steps(step5) abends every month end with S822 and with the message "REGION UNAVAILABLE, ERROR CODE=20"

When the job is restarted from abend step without any changes it goes on to run fine. The culprit step is a FOCUS program with REGION=8M. There is another FOCUS step(Step3) before this which is also REGION=8M and runs fine everytime.

Any idea why this is happening and possible solutions?REGION=0M is an option but I wanted to understand the exact reason and why it is not happening for the previous steps.

Akatsukami · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 1:59 am

This is not a "region isn't big enough error" error, it's "a region can not be gotten" error. I think that you'll definitely have to sic the sysprogs onto this.

CICS fan · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:44 am

Apologies for poor language skills, but what does this mean "sic the sysprogs onto this"?

Akatsukami · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:52 am

"Sic" (sometimes incorrectly spelled "sick") means to urge or order to attack; usually used of dogs, as "The police sicced their dogs on the rioters". In this case, however, I'm using it of sys[tem] prog[rammer]s.

The difference, if any, between sysprogs and dogs is not a topic that I intend to discuss right now

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 3:40 am

here is a link to the page where the S822 abend is described

publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/IEA2H781/2.502?SHELF=IEA2BK81&DT=20080124095350&CASE=

and the additional explanation here
publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/IEA2M891/SPTGG085I

or here
publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/IEA2M891/SPTGG186I

should give You and Your sysprogs something to meditate on

but You certainly have carried on the research already and found out everything Yourself!

Robert Sample · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:05 am

Phrzby Phil · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:10 am

So if you quote someone who has misspelled "sic" as "sick," then to show that the misspelling is in the original, you'll say something like (assuming the dogs are ill):

"Did the police sick [sic] their sick dogs on the rioters?"

The "[sic]" here being Latin for "thus."

nevilh · Active User Joined: 01 Sep 2006 Posts: 262

This problem can be caused by storage leakage, basically a previous step acquires storage and does not free it or only frees part of it. This leads to storage fragmentation in the address space, and when a subsequent step runs the complete Region is no longer available. As previous posters suggested it might be a good idea to inform your Sysprogs and get them to take a look.

Garry Carroll · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:53 pm