Sharing: hints, tcodes, commands that may help when solving support package implementation problems

Ooops! Update again. This title is a bit long but very detailed, isn't it? 

After being tortured by the support package problem of ESH (one of our team's ERP test system) for two days, I am now trying to make a summary for the hints, t-codes and commands that used for analyzing or testing. Maybe I will add some experience in the end.

Hints:

1. Read the document carefully before any upgrade!! When I put sapka70013 in the import queue, the queue stopped because import sapka70013 has a conflict with some add-ons on the system.
2. Try to import the sp queue in background and asynchronously, this will mostly keep your data safe.
3. Be sure that when you implement the implementation, there's no user or background job disturbing the system. The data inconsistency caused by this is very very annoying.

T-codes:

1. SPAM, STMS. one for support package manager and one for transport management system. First configure the tp tool and then we start the sp implementation. 

        In STMS, configure the domain controller is the first step. After that we should configure the configure tool parameters, in which, the following keywords are important.

1) dir_trans: <sapmnt>/trans/, under which, the bin directory contains the profile TP_Domain_<SID>.pfl. the cofile directory contains the imported queues, the EPS/in directory contains the data files of the support packages, the tmp directory contains the run time logs of tp.exe and the log directory contains the tp log and the finished component update logs.

                2) system_pf: this is always set as the DEFAULT.pfl address of each system. In which the tp.exe gets the rdisp/mshost, rdisp/msserv and rdisp/msserv_internal parameters.

        3) About parameter change, be aware that they should be firstly changed in the domain controller system and then transport to the other systems.

        4) In the initial screen of STMS, click overview->imports->click the system you want to check->Goto Import monitor, you can check the import queues and the status.

        In SPAM, 'Goto' menu is very important, you can check a lot of status there, including the tp status and the queue status. If you feel bad about the implementation, please find Extras->Reset to let go the implementation and check the root cause as soon as possible.

1. SM31, SE16. these two are table maintenance related tables. the first to maintain, the second to display. If you cannot delete entries through SM31, you can try this statements in the OS level while logging as a oracle database system admin.

          "delete from SAPSR3.<table_name> where <condition>";

            "update SAPSR3.<table_name> set <statement> where <condition>";

Commands (OS level):

tp related.

        1) to check the import queue buffer: tp showbuffer <SID> pf=<location_of_profile> tag=SPAM

     If there is any problem when the buffer shown, check the Dir_Trans/buffer/<sid>. Either deletion or modification of the file can make the spam re-produce the file again.

        2) to manually import the queue: tp import <all or sp name> <SID> pf=<pf> tag=spam -Dsourcesystems -Dclientcascade=yes

Tables:

1. TPSTAT, corresponding to the point Tcode 1->4), it shows the imported queues that have ever been scheduled. If your implementation is in Import_proper phase and you cannot reset the import queue, then you manually implement the sp in the OS level, you will need to delete the queues here and then delete the import status table entries.  
2. PAT01, PAT03. These two tables contain the support package status. In PAT01, there exists current support package(s) and there implementation status. In PAT03, there exist all the support packages that have been scheduled in the queues, with the status tag which indicates the status of the implementation of that support packages ('I' for Imported, '?' for abort, 'N' for Not imported, etc).  
3. TRBAT, TRJOB. These two tables contain the information of transport system.  
4. TMSTLOCKP, TMSTLOCKR. These two other tables detail the information in TPSTAT. If TPSTAT doesn't contain any entry, you can delete the entries in these two tables.
5. PAT10. This table also contains the current implementing sp. If this table and PAT01 neither contains sp, the spam can be lunched normally, otherwise 'Queue_Not_Empty' error may happen when SPAM check the requirements of the implementation.