Tracing with the AIX system trace

In addition to the IBM® MQ trace, IBM MQ for AIX® users can use the standard AIX system trace.

Note: You should use the aix option, only when directed to do so by IBM service personnel.

AIX system tracing is a three-step process:

Set the -o parameter on the strmqtrc command to aix.
Gather the data, then run the endmqtrc command.
Format the results.

IBM MQ uses two trace hook identifiers:

X'30D': This event is recorded by IBM MQ on entry to or exit from a subroutine.
X'30E': This event is recorded by IBM MQ to trace data such as that being sent or received across a communications network.

Trace provides detailed execution tracing to help you to analyze problems. IBM service support personnel might ask for a problem to be re-created with trace enabled. The files produced by trace can be very large so it is important to qualify a trace, where possible. For example, you can optionally qualify a trace by time and by component.

There are two ways to run trace:

Interactively.
The following sequence of commands runs an interactive trace on the program myprog and ends the trace.
```
trace -j30D,30E -o trace.file
->!myprog
->q
```
Asynchronously.
The following sequence of commands runs an asynchronous trace on the program myprog and ends the trace.
```
trace -a -j30D,30E -o trace.file
myprog
trcstop
```

You can format the trace file with the command:

trcrpt -t MQ_INSTALLATION_PATH/lib/amqtrc.fmt trace.file > report.file

MQ_INSTALLATION_PATH represents the high-level directory in which IBM MQ is installed.

report.file is the name of the file where you want to put the formatted trace output.

Note: All IBM MQ activity on the machine is traced while the trace is active.