User's Guide Globe Icon

MCS: How to Log and View Trace Information

Goal

Log trace information to help troubleshoot problems that can occur in Management & Control Services (MCS) and MCS-managed products.

Technique

Using the MCS Tracing function, you can view and save trace data from individual products in one central location. The type of information that can be traced for a product is specified by that product. Each MCS-managed product logs its own trace entries locally, and reports that data to MCS when requested.

This feature is used by the following Attachmate products and components:

Tasks

The following are the main tasks you need to complete for this How-To (with links to the detailed steps which follow):

  1. Enable tracing within a component or MCS feature.

  2. Configure trace options in MCS.

  3. Start and stop the trace.

  4. View the trace.

1. Enable Tracing Within a Component or MCS Feature

Trace logging is not enabled by default for most MCS-managed products. To enable tracing, you must configure a trace for a particular product, and then start the configured trace.

Choose an item in the list to view the steps required to enable tracing for that component.

To enable tracing for Terminal Viewers
  1. In the MCS Selection panel, point to Products and then click Terminal Viewers.

  2. In the Terminal Viewers tree, choose a host type.

  3. Select a configuration type.

  4. From the Configuration List page, select a configuration and then click Properties.

  5. From the Properties page, select Trace and then click Configure.

    The Trace Properties page appears.

  6. Select Enable Trace.

  7. To send the trace file to MCS, accept the default value for the MCS trace file directory in the URL box.

    The URL for the MCS default trace file directory is http://server_name/mcs/logtrace (spaces are not permitted).

    Using the default URL, the trace file is saved to ...\mcs\data\mcs\trace and appears in MCS as a trace file of type LEGACY. Terminal Viewers automatically names trace files sessionname.binary, where sessionname is the name of the current client session.

  8. Save your changes.

    Terminal Viewers create a separate trace file for each host session. Trace can be used with both terminal and printer configurations.
To enable tracing for ID management
  1. In the MCS Selection panel, point to MCS Functions and then choose ID Manager.

  2. In the ID Manager tree, choose Configure.

  3. On the ID Monitor page, select Enable Tracing.

    When tracing is enabled, ID Manager's allocation of IDs and update of ID status will be slower, due to increased communication with the MCS tracing function.
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2. Configure Trace Options in MCS

  1. In the MCS Selection panel under MCS Functions, choose Tracing.

  2. Under Tracing, choose Configure Traces.

  3. In the Configure Traces page, choose New.

  4. In the New Trace dialog box, select a component (product) and the cluster and/or computer on which to trace the component, and then choose OK.

    To display the Machine list for specifying a specific computer within a cluster, you can select Show machines in cluster, below the Cluster list.

  5. Under Style, select either Component or End-to-End to specify the type of trace to perform.

    A component trace traces activities (tasks) for the selected component only, while an end-to-end trace follows activities (tasks) between successive components (for example, from Presentation Builder to Smart Connectors).

  6. Repeat these steps to create as many different trace configurations as you require.

  7. Choose Save to save your new configurations.

During tracing, MCS creates and assigns a unique correlation ID to each task. In end-to-end tracing, the correlation ID is passed along with the task from one component to the next, and is used by MCS to correlate and display all of the related trace entries at the MCS console when requested. Each correlation ID also includes an index number, which is incremented by one at each stage of the task's progress.

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3. Start and Stop the Trace

  1. In the MCS Selection panel under MCS Functions, choose Tracing.

  2. Under Tracing, choose Configure Traces.

  3. Select a trace from the Configured Traces list and then do one of the following:

    To do this
    		 Do this
    Start the trace   Select Start.
    Stop the trace Select Stop.

When you are finished with a particular trace, you can stop or even delete a trace configuration, preventing the tracing service from consuming unnecessary resources and disk space.

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4. View the Trace

You can view trace data that has been saved to a file or from a currently active trace buffer.

To view a trace
  1. In the MCS Selection panel under MCS Functions, choose Tracing.

  2. Under Tracing, choose View Traces.

    The View Traces (Select File) page displays lists of both saved trace files and currently active traces. For a description of the options on this page, choose Help in the upper-right corner of the MCS window.

  3. Do one of the following:

    To view trace data
    		 Do this
    That has been saved to file Select a file name in the Save Traces list, and then choose OK.
    From an active trace Select a configured trace from the Currently Active Traces list, and then choose OK.
  4. From the Correlation IDs list, select one or more entries to view, and then choose Display Selected IDs. (To select multiple items, hold down the CTRL key as you select each item.)

    MCS contacts each computer that is associated with the selected Correlation ID, and obtains the trace data stored on that computer. A list of trace events associated with the selected Correlation ID(s) appears.

  5. To limit the list of Correlation IDs to one or more specific components (products), select or clear items in the product tree in the lower-left corner of the page.

  6. To refresh the Correlation IDs list based on the selections you make, choose Apply.

  7. Select an item in the list to view additional details about that item.

    Details about the selected Correlation ID appear in the Trace Message and/or Trace Raw Data fields, below the event list.

  8. To display the trace raw data in a more readable format, select Display renderers.

    The rendered data replaces the raw data (byte stream) displayed in the Trace Raw Data field.

  9. If a product provides multiple renderers, click Select renderer to select a different renderer from those provided.

  10. To view the contents of another trace file, click View Other Files.

  11. Select a saved trace file or a currently active trace and then click OK to view the contents of that file, or click Cancel to return to the current trace.
Related Topics
Bullet Logging and Viewing Trace Information
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