Preparing error data for IBM Support

Edit online

If you have a problem with CICS Explorer®, you might need to send the error logs and other information to IBM® Support. You can use CICS Explorer to collect all necessary error information in a single compressed file, ready to send.

About this task

The error logs are stored in a folder in the local Eclipse workspace on your computer. For the location of the local workspace, see Taking a backup of the CICS Explorer workspace. You can collect the necessary error data in one file, ready to send to an IBM Support when requested.

Procedure

  • If the CICS Explorer user interface is working:
    1. In the CICS SM perspective, click File > Trace > Collect Service Data on the main menu for the workbench.
    2. In the Save Service data as file window, select the location where you want to save the compressed file, and click Save.

      The service data is saved as a compressed file. The filename is in the format CICSExplorerServiceData-date-time.zip, where date and time are numbers that indicate the date and time of the collected data, for example CICSExplorerServiceData-20150318-080311.zip. Remember to record your actions at the time the failure occurred, to aid further analysis of the problem.

  • If the CICS Explorer user interface is not usable, collect the logs and other Explorer working files (such as settings) from the Eclipse workspace folder. Use an archiving utility (a program that creates .zip, .rar, .tar, or .tar.gz files) to collect directory content.
  • Optional: Optionally, if the UI is up but unresponsive, follow these instructions to take a Java™ Thread Dump. The dump might provide useful information for IBM Support.
    1. If you use CICS Explorer on Linux®, perform the following procedures:
      1. Find out the process identifier of your CICS Explorer by using any system tool. For example, enter the following command from a shell (command line):
        $ ps -ef | grep cicsexplorer
      2. From a shell, invoke kill -QUIT <process_id>. A file named javacore.YYYYMMDD.<other>.txt will be created in the CICS Explorer directory.
    2. If you use CICS Explorer on Windows, perform the following procedures:
      1. Ensure that you start CICS Explorer with the -consolelog parameter, so that CICS Explorer opens a shell (command line) window only for output besides a graphical UI window.
      2. If a dump is not taken, press Ctrl+Break on the command line to request a dump.
      3. From the consolelog window, you will see a message that includes the location and name of the dump, similar to:
        JVMDUMP010I Java dump written to C:\...\CICS Explorer\javacore.20090610.092732.6908.0001.txt.
      This is the file you need to send to IBM Support.

What to do next

Collect other MustGather documentation and send them to IBM Support. See Troubleshooting.