Held optical files

If the optical file system is unable to update the optical disk during a close function, the operation fails and the file is marked as held.

The optical file system might still consider the file to be open. If it considers the file open, the optical file system allows any application that already has the file open to continue operating. In any case, no new application can open a file while it remains held. If the system can correct the condition that caused the failure, and the file is still open, the application may attempt to close the file again. If the close function succeeds, the system no longer holds the file. (If an HFS application specified an open type of normal, it cannot access the file through the HFS API any longer. IBM^® provides online information on the open types that concern the Open Stream File command.

• Recover a held optical file
  This topic provides instructions on recovering held optical file.
• Save a held optical file
  Saving a held optical file physically writes the data and file attributes to the optical disk. You can choose to save to the original volume, directory, and file name that you specified at open time, or to a new optical file path.
• Release a held optical file
  A held file can only be released if no locks are currently imposed on the file by other active jobs.
• Implement held optical file functions
  Before deciding whether to save or release a held optical file, you might want to view information that can influence save and release decisions.
• Disable held optical file support
  i5/OS™ is shipped with held optical file support enabled. If desired, you may disable it by using the Change Optical Attributes (CHGOPTA) command.