An HP 3000 manager wrote that a 24x7 application at his shop is stable and never goes offline unless it's required. But the everyday management had to include aborting the app once a week.

We take that application offline to close out the spoolfile that the application generates. Is there a way to keep the application running, and just redirect the output to a new spoolfile? We're using an N-Class server.

Robert Schlosser of Global Business Systems replied: Short of closing and reopening the application after n number of pages, you could have the application read (without wait and checking status codes) a message file. It could then close and open the output file on demand, and possibly even close down the application gracefully (no abort).

Our Homesteading Editor Gilles Schipper replied: I think the only way you could do that would be to actually modify the application program to periodically (say, for example, every 10 pages or every 100 pages) close then re-open the print file.

Olav Kappert of IOMIT International added:

If the program can be slightly modified, then I would suggest creating a message file as a conduit to the application. The program would do a read of the message file with the nowait option every once and awhile.  If the application encounters a keyword indicating a new spoolfile, then the program would close the spoolfile and reopen it.

An alternate method would involve the application being modified to close and open the file at a particular day and time during the week.