Today SAP announced that there are some problems with the sapxpg binary due to incompatibility in kernel 749.
This affects both SAP_BASIS releases 740 SP >=18 and 750 SP >=8.
SAPXPG is a kernel binary that is used for controlling external programs or the external commands within the same system or in a remote system. The trace for SAPXPG is dev_cp.
There could be two symptoms as per SAP note 2443381:
“1. You use the Unicode sapxpg and the asynchronous execution of external commands no longer works.”
=> in this case for:
– kernel 745, sapxpg_uc has to be patched to PL >=416
– kernel 749, sapxpg has to be patched to PL >=210
“2. You have SAP_BASIS 750 or 740 and SAP Kernel 749, and there are problems with the execution of external commands that have non-ASCII charactes in the parameter string or in their output. These characters are not transferred correctly.”
=> in this case for both 745 and 749 kernels the note 2443381 must be implemented.
But as there are also some other minor problems detected with SAPXPG, it would be best if you update directly to sapxpg_uc PL 510 for kernel 745 and sapxpg PL 310 for kernel 749.
In order to find out the version of sapxpg you can execute:
./sapxpg -VERSION
I recommend that you subscribe to the SAP news page in order to be up to date to the latest kernel related announcements: https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/SI/SAP+Kernel%3A+Important+News
More information can be found in notes:
2443381 – Problems during execution of external commands as of SAP_BASIS 740
2479738 – Connection test for sapxpg or sapxpg_uc fails