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Code for IBM i Docs

Common Issues

This page consists of fixes to weird errors users receive based on system configuration.

Action showing is not an identifier

Your Action output showing something like is not an identifier is usually due to bash not being your default shell, which is recommended when using Code for IBM i.

Terminal
Running Action: Deploy and build 🔨 (1:45:02 PM)
Working directory: /home/x/test
Commands:
                /QOpenSys/pkgs/bin/gmake BIN_LIB=JONESF1 OPTS=*EVENTF


bsh: LOCALPATH=c:\Development\x\qrpglesrc\test11.rpgle: is not an identifier


Fetching errors for JONESF1/TEST11.

Code for IBM i can check and set bash as your default shell. Disconnect from your connection, right click on the connection where the error is appearing and select ‘Connect and Reload Server Settings’. If you have bash installed, you should see a message about setting bash as your default shell.

Error in shell configuration

This error appears when you have lines in startup files that write to standard out. Usually the main issue is when the following commands exist in the .bashrc file (non-login startup file).

  • echo
  • liblist - this is a new bash builtin on IBM i which adds to the library list, but also writes to standard out.

You can see the original issue on GitHub :

This was my ‘a-ha’ moment as I did recently change my ~/.bashrc file on the IBMi to pump out some general output. And sure enough, when I toggle the ~/.bashrc file between writing to stdout and not writing to stdout, I am seeing the issue appear/disappear (respectively).

The best solution, for me, is to keep the shell initialization that writes to stdout in my ~/.profile file which will not execute via an SFTP connection. That, however, is outside the scope of this extension.

No results from SQL execution

When executing an SQL statement, no messages or results are appearing. This has been happening when the SSHD has not started up correctly. You may see in the Code for IBM i output is returning something like the following:

Terminal
/home/NUJKJ: LC_ALL=EN_US.UTF-8 system "call QSYS/QZDFMDB2 PARM('-d' '-i' '-t')"
select srcdat, rtrim(srcdta) as srcdta from ILEDITOR.QGPL_QCLSRC_A_CHGUSR_C
{
"code": 0,
"signal": null,
"stdout": "DB2>",
"stderr": ""
}

Potential fix

If you run ps -ef | grep sshd and see /QOpenSys/usr/sbin/sshd, this fix may work for you.

  1. End the current SSHD instance: ENDTCPSVR SERVER(*SSHD).
  2. Start the SSHD up again: STRTCPSVR SERVER(*SSHD).
  3. In a pase shell, run ps -ef | grep sshd.

You should now see that the SSHD has started up from a different place.

Terminal
$ ps -ef | grep sshd
 qsecofr    107      1   0   Jul 15      -  0:00 /QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData/SC1/OpenSSH/sbin/sshd

The issue should now be resolved.

Connection using SSH private key always fails

On some platforms (e.g., Linux PopOS) your connection using SSH private key may fail with a message like:

Terminal
$ Error while signing data with privateKey: error:06000066:public key routines:OPENSSL_internal:DECODE_ERROR

This may occur if the OpenSSL routines on your platform used by Code for IBM i have problems with the default public key format.

Fix by making copy of private key in PEM format

You can solve this by creating a second instance of your extant public key in PEM format to sit alongside your default key. For instance, if your public key is $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa you can do the following:

Terminal
cd $HOME/.ssh
cp id_rsa id_rsa_original
ssh-keygen -p -f id_rsa -m PEM
mv id_rsa id_rsa.pem
mv id_rsa_original id_rsa

Now configure the Code for IBM i connection using id_rsa.pem instead of id_rsa. In this way, your original key is still there to make connections as always, and you have a new copy in PEM format using which Code for IBM i connections operate correctly.