In releases prior to SAS^® 9.2, if you specified a blocksize larger than 32,760 (32K) for a data set in JCL or a FILENAME statement, SAS set the blocksize to 0. This caused the system to determine the optimal blocksize. However, starting with SAS^® 9.3, SAS fails when opening that data set.

The following is an example of the failures that occur in SAS 9.2 and SAS 9.3:

... 
//STEP1   EXEC SAS 
... 
//OUTFILE1 DD DISP=(NEW,CATLG,DELETE),                                 
//  DSN=sample.lbi.dataset,                                            
//  UNIT=SYSDA,                                                        
//  SPACE=(TRK,(15,15),RLSE),                                          
//  DCB=(RECFM=FB,LRECL=80,BLKSIZE=64000)                              
//SYSIN DD *                                                           
                                                    
 DATA _NULL_;                                                          
  FILE OUTFILE1;                                                       
  PUT 'THIS IS A TEST TO SEE IF SAS WILL FAIL ON LBI FILE ALLOCATION';
 RUN;    

/*
//

• The job completes with a return code of 8 in the SAS step.
• The following messages appear in the SAS log:

  ERROR: OPEN is aborted for file OUTFILE1. LRECL (80) or BLKSIZE (64000) is greater than 32,760.
  NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.

• In SAS 9.3, the following message appears in the JES SYSMSGS for the JOB:

IEC141I 013-68,IFG0196L,SASLBI01,SAS9,OUTFILE1,813B,SCRD01,
sample.lbi.dataset

The IEC141I message indicates that the file OPEN failed with system abend 013, and the return code 68 indicates that the cause is an invalid block size.

Workarounds

To circumvent this issue, you must specify a BLKSIZE value of 32K or less.

Starting in SAS^® 9.4 TS1M2, you can specify the SAS system option FILELBI to enable SAS to create tape files with a blocksize greater than 32K. If the option is set to NOFILELBI, SAS ignores blocksize specifications greater than 32K as it did prior to SAS 9.3. You can set this option at any time during the SAS session in an OPTIONS statement or in the CONFIG file.

Note: Because IBM supports LBI (Large Block Interface) with the BSAM access method only on tape, SAS can support only LBI for tape data sets.

For more information about support for Large Block Interface in SAS, see SAS Note 52839: "The FILEBLKSIZE option for 3490E or 3590 cannot be set to a value greater than 64K."

A hot fix is available for SAS 9.3 TSIM2 only. This fix provides support for the SAS system option FILELBI/NOFILELBI. Click the Hot Fix tab in this note to access this hot fix.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for this issue for Base SAS 9.3_M2 is available at: