Log files

Use your log files to record specific events for troubleshooting and system analysis.

Log files generally record InfoSphere® Master Data Management Collaboration Server - Collaborative Edition runtime events, including exception traces and error messages and can help you resolve issues. For troubleshooting and analysis of your log files, you can use the Log and Trace Analyzer (LTA).

The InfoSphere Master Data Management Collaboration Server - Collaborative Edition log files under the <install dir>/logs directory provides helpful debugging information.

Runtime log files

Each product service includes several different runtime-generated log files that record certain events within each of the services. The svc.out log file is a runtime log file that each service creates, and it should be one of the first log files that you analyze when troubleshooting a problem. After starting a service, view the svc.out file for errors or exceptions to ensure that the service started correctly.

For the appsvr, the most common startup problem is database related. The appsvr does not start if it cannot connect to the database. The db.log file in the appsvr log directory indicates if a connection can be made.

The svc.out log file is located in the respective $TOP/logs/service/service_Name directories, where service is one of the services listed below and service_Name is the unique service name of the given service:
  • admin
  • appsvr
  • default
  • eventprocessor
  • queuemanager
  • rmi
  • scheduler
  • workflowengine
Example
A scheduler service with unique server name sch1, produces a svc.out runtime log file in the $TOP/logs/scheduler/sch1 directory.

Configuration files for the log files

The default log file format is the log4j PatternLayout format. To provide you with some control over the legibility of your PatternLayout log files, you can modify how the messages are formatted within the log file. The log4j.xml file is located in $TOP/etc/default/ directory.

For the log file, you can choose to use one of two formats: log4j PatternLayout format and Common Base Event (CBE) CBELayout format. You specify which format that you want to use in the common.properties file. The CBE format is generally used only while troubleshooting a problem under instruction by IBM® Software Support.

On UNIX, the console output from a service is redirected to daemon.out and daemon.err in each log directory.

You can run the —verbose option with almost any script to print debugging information. For InfoSphere Master Data Management Collaboration Server - Collaborative Edition services, you can use the svc_control.sh script to display information about the configuration of a service. To display the configuration information including classpath and JVM system properties that start a service, you can run the script <install dir>/bin/go/svc_control.sh –action=show_config –svc_name=<svc full name>. The start_cmd and start_cmd_args settings show the exact string used to start a service.

To add a filter to ignore a particular type of exception that is logged in the log files:

If you want to ignore a particular type of exception that is logged in the log files, then you need to add a filter in the log4j.xml located here $TOP/etc/default/. If you add the filter, you can avoid warnings, and less severe exceptions from getting logged.

In the log4j.xml file add following to filter out a particular exception:
<filter class="org.apache.log4j.varia.StringMatchFilter">
     <param name="StringToMatch" value="ExceptionName" />
     <param name="AcceptOnMatch" value="false" />
     </filter>

ExceptionName - The name of exception that you want to avoid getting logged. AcceptOnMatch - Set to the value of false, so whenever the parameter finds an exception having particular exception name, the exception is not logged.

<RollingFile name="EXCEP" fileName="/opt/MDM/logs/${svc_name}/ exception.log" append="true" 
filePattern="/opt/MDM/logs/${svc_name}/exception-%d{MM-dd-yyyy}-%i.log">
<PatternLayout>
<Pattern>%d [%t] %-5p %c %x- %m%n</Pattern>
</PatternLayout>
<Policies>
<TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy />
<SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy size="10 MB" />
</Policies>
<DefaultRolloverStrategy max="2" />
<filter class="org.apache.log4j.varia.StringMatchFilter">
     <param name="StringToMatch" value="ExceptionName" />
     <param name="AcceptOnMatch" value="false" />
     </filter>
</RollingFile>