Hi,

This is an interesting question. My recollection is that the CUSTOM flag used to be documented as something that was intended for future use. In general that implies this is not a fully implemented behavior in the client code. There is no CUSTOM variable in the default FILE class, so it isn't clear how it could be used. I tried adding a new variable named "CUSTOM" but I was unable to get any method configured there to execute during the file audit.

There is an existing METHOD variable in the class named ZINIT. I found that if you provide a rexx script to do the file rename and call it from the ZINIT attribute, it will execute, but only one time, when the service is first installed. If the file appears later, after the service has already been run once, then the method is not called at that point. But it might be useful for a one-time requirement to rename the file if present today. For testing I used a rexx script with two input parameters (one for the existing name and one for the desired name). This is a simple two line script named rename.rex:

parse arg oldname newname
call edmcmd 'hide cmd /c ren '||oldname||' '||newname

In the ZINIT method I call the script providing the desired file name. For example, if a file named C:\Temp\test.fil exists, in order to rename it test.adt I configure ZINIT as follows:

rename.rex c:\temp\test.fil test.adt

This is not the ideal solution since it will not detect and rename the file if it appears after the service is initially installed, but it is the best I was able to achieve using file auditing. A more robust solution is a software service that looks for and renames the file. The same script above added as the ZVERIFY method of a software service (that can also deliver the rexx script to machines) provides a solution that will continue to look for and rename the file if it reappears at any future date. If you're interested in that approach, let me know and I will describe it fully.

Steve

Steve,

Not looked into this but is that because you have the wrong options attached to the Audit service, i.e. the RIMOPTS, should be Differenced IVU not Differenced/Full IU?

If you have IU connected the audit will only run on initial installation and update but not verifies.

Nigel,

I did set the RIMOPTS to IVU (Differenced) but this did not change the behavior. The audit ran, but the ZVERIFY method I added did not. 

However, I did re-test this and I now see that if you add a ZVERIFY method to the AUDIT FILE class it will run the second time the file is audited. So I am guessing the best way to make the rename happen as soon as the file is detected would be to add both a ZCREATE and a ZVERIFY method to the AUDIT FILE class to handle the rename.

It would be very handy to be able to extract the path in which the file was located to assist with the renaming command syntax but so far I have not been able to determine that path information programmatically during the ZVERIFY rexx script execution. I am guessing the search might be using wild-card syntax, so the appropriate rename command would not necessarily be obvious.