Working with trace

Use trace to obtain detailed information about running the WebSphere® Application Server components, including application servers, clients, and other processes in the environment.

About this task

Trace files show the time and sequence of methods called by WebSphere Application Server base classes, and you can use these files to pinpoint the failure. Collecting a trace is often requested by IBM® technical support personnel. If you are not familiar with the internal structure of WebSphere Application Server, the trace output might not be meaningful to you.

[z/OS]You can configure trace settings with the administrative console, or you can configure tracing from the MVS console using the modify command.

Note: This topic references one or more of the application server log files. As a recommended alternative, you can configure the server to use the High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) log and trace infrastructure instead of using SystemOut.log , SystemErr.log, trace.log, and activity.log files on distributed and IBM i systems. You can also use HPEL in conjunction with your native z/OS® logging facilities. If you are using HPEL, you can access all of your log and trace information using the LogViewer command-line tool from your server profile bin directory. See the information about using HPEL to troubleshoot applications for more information on using HPEL.

Procedure

  1. Configure an output destination to which trace data is sent.
  2. Enable trace for the appropriate WebSphere Application Server or application components.
  3. Run the application or operation to generate the trace data.
  4. [AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows][IBM i] Analyze the trace data or forward it to the appropriate organization for analysis.
  5. [z/OS] Analyze the trace data or forward it to the appropriate organization for analysis.

Results

For current information available from IBM Support on known problems and their resolution, see the IBM Support page.

IBM Support has documents that can save you time gathering information needed to resolve this problem. Before opening a PMR, see the IBM Support page.

What to do next

You can use Cross Component Trace (XCT) to help diagnose problems and protect information with the sensitive log and trace guard.