Symitar Upgrade and JFS FAQs

Q1:  I am about to upgrade our Symitar software.  Will clicking the Pause button in Job File Scheduler be enough to stop it logging in to the Symitar host?

A1:  NO.  The pause button does not stop Job File Scheduler from logging into the Symitar host; it only stops any further jobs from queueing up, and it also removes any previously queued jobs from the Symitar batch queue two minutes before they are due to run.  For this reason, JFS still needs to log in to Symitar and check the batch queues.  Clicking Pause DOES NOT stop JFS from logging into Symitar.  The next release of JFS will have a Halt button that will stop all Symitar logins completely; until then, either comment out the JFS entry in the cron before the upgrade and uncomment the cron entry after the upgrade is complete, or simply shut down the JFS server before beginning the Symitar upgrade and then restart the JFS server after the upgrade is complete.

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Q2:  After performing a Symitar upgrade, I am receiving an error similar to the following from JFS: "The Job File Scheduler user does not appear to have adequate permissions to enter the SYM000 directory.  Please run the SYMOP command and grant your JFS user permission to work in SYM000."

A2:  This is most likely due to a permissions issue caused by the Symitar update.  It is a known bug that the group permissions for SYM000 are erroneously changed after a Symitar upgrade, even if you've upgraded a Sym other than SYM000!  To fix this error, log in as the "root" user on the Symitar host and type the following command at the # sign:

chgrp SYM000 /SYM/SYM000

This will reset the group permissions for the SYM000 directory back to the original values, and the JFS error should go away.