Was about traces, logs, and messages

about tracing, logging, and messages

This Help file provides an overview of the traces, logs, and messages generated from the product code. See also: View traces, logs, and messages

Tracking, logging, and message settings

Tracking and debugging applications

The Application server product provides its own level of information that includes advanced information from the console to more detailed server execution logs and integrated tracking.

Learning: Tracking, logging, and messaging

Messages and Trace events

Console Message Area

Critical Event Viewer

Collect Trace Events

Recording

The tracking system described in this file tracks the WebSphere application Server component to assist IBM support personnel in diagnosing and troubleshooting the failures that occurred. It does not track application code, such as small service programs and Enterprise beans that are installed on application servers in WebSphere.

However, object-level tracking (OLT) and debugging tools are provided to track and debug your application. See Tracking and debugging applications for more information. traces, logs, and messages

When messages, logs, and traces process your application, it is an important diagnostic tool for reviewing the WebSphere application Server product code.

When you run code on a application Server product, the message provides a high-level view of important events, such as successful completion and critical errors.

When the Management Server initializes and runs, the log provides information about the Management Server. When an error or problem occurs, you can view the log to see the details of the failure.

For less impact on performance, the log collects enough information to help service personnel decide which part is out of the question, so that if additional diagnostics are required, they can turn on the trace.

Tracing is a combination of data throughout the WebSphere product code statement. When the code is executed, the trace information is sent to a file or stream that you specify so that you and the IBM support staff can analyze it.

Tracing is useful when you need more detailed information than messages and logs, but it is best not to use tracing frequently because it affects performance.

Tracking System Support:

Track special events that occur in a product or component. This is known as event tracking, which can include method entry/exit tracking and debug tracking between other types

Dumps the status of a product or its components. This is known as execution state dump messages and trace events

IBM WebSphere Application Server provides message events and trace events:

A message Event is generated by a system or user code that responds to a system event that occurs in an application server environment. They are always collected. You can decide whether to view them.

Message events include: An audit indicates an important event that must be logged.

The warning indicates that a problem has occurred and that the problem must be fixed to prevent more serious problems in the future.

termination indicates that the process terminated gracefully (returning 0 to the shell).

Fatal indicates that the process has encountered a fatal error and has terminated abnormally. When a process terminates in this manner, the tracking service writes its internal ring buffer to the local file and returns 1 to the shell.

Trace Events are generated by system or user code. They are collected only when you specify that you want to collect them.

The application Server product has built-in trace statements. Your development team should include trace statements in applications that you will be managing using IBM WebSphere application Server.

The console has set up to enable or disable collection of these trace events: The entry indicates that a process has entered a method.

Exit indicates that a process has exited the method.

Debugging provides information for debugging.

events indicate that important events, such as changes in state, have occurred.

The following sections discuss the facilities used in application Server to review messages and track events. Console Message Area

The console message area, located at the bottom of the WebSphere Management console, provides the highest level of trace information. When a message event occurs, it is displayed in the message area.

When you need more information and the message area does not meet your needs, you can review the messages that are logged in the critical Event Viewer. Critical Event Viewer

The Critical Event Viewer collects the most recent message events. You can configure the critical Event Viewer to display any audit, critical error, exception termination, warning, and other event information.

The log limit attribute of the critical Event Viewer specifies how many serious events to log. They will be stored in the Management warehouse (database). If your database has become too full, set the log limit value to a minimum for your specific situation.

You can access the critical Event Viewer from the Console menu in the menu bar of the admin console. For more information about using it, consult the tracking task help.

When you need more detailed information than the console message area and the critical Event Viewer, you can perform tracing on one or more application servers. Collect trace Events

WebSphere internal tracing appears at two levels: on the Management Server (usually one node has one) in the application server

IBM WebSphere Application Server version 3 creates an instance of a trace runtime environment for servers in each admin domain. The tracking run environment collects data from trace events that are generated in the application server and managed server code.

We recommend that you use tracing as little as possible because collecting trace events requires additional resources. It can have a negative impact on the performance of the application server or node performing the trace.

However, many times, you will also find that tracing is useful and necessary. The following is an overview of where to track settings in the admin console:

console-> trace-> enabled

You can use this Console menu bar option to track the WebSphere management Console class.

Application Server tracing features

You can specify trace settings for a single application server. For each server, you can send trace data to a specified file or stream, such as the server's standard output stream.

These settings are part of the Application Server feature. Once you start the server, the trace starts.

managing server Tracking features

You can specify trace settings similar to the application server for each Management server. You can specify the file or stream in which to send the data.

This setting is located in the Admin.config file in the bin directory under the installation root directory of application Server (for example, C:/websphere/appserver/bin/admin.config in Windows NT). For more information, see Tracing feature help.

Tracking Management Settings

Each server has a ring buffer that is used to collect trace information for the server. You can use the Trace Management dialog box to dump trace information for the currently selected Management Server or application server. You can also specify which server class to track.

These settings are available only if you right-click the running node or application server on the topology tree and also click Trace. See tracking task Help for more information.

Record

Records occur at the Management Server level. The log files are saved in the/log directory in the root directory of the WebSphere application Server installation.