Tracing

This section explains how to use CS Linux trace facilities to collect diagnostic data while the CS Linux system is running and how to produce trace output.

Note: Turn tracing on only when you are requested to do so by support personnel or when you need the trace output to diagnose a problem. At other times, turn off all tracing because it degrades system performance.

You can use either the Motif administration program or the command-line administration program to do the following:

  • Enable or disable line tracing for various link types.
  • Enable or disable client/server tracing.
  • Enable or disable internal tracing.

API tracing can be enabled or disabled for the APPC, CPI-C, LUA, MS, CSV, and NOF APIs. Usually you set up API tracing using the SNATRC environment variable, but occasionally you may need to use a combination of environment variables, verbs, and program functions to do this.

Figure 1, shows the interfaces where each of the main types of tracing occurs in the overall structure of CS Linux.

Figure 1. Tracing Interfaces

The trace facilities write data to text files and to binary files. Use any standard ASCII text editor to view the text files. Use the snatrcfmt command-line utility to convert the binary output to text files so that you can also view them with an ASCII text editor. For more information, see Formatting internal binary trace output into text files.

The following sections describe each type of tracing CS Linux provides (listed in order of usefulness to end-users, beginning with the most useful).