Exchanging information with IBM

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To diagnose or identify a problem, you might need to provide IBM® Support with data and information from your system. In other cases, IBM Support might provide you with tools or utilities to use for problem determination.

Sending information to IBM Support

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To reduce the time that is required to resolve your problem, you can send trace and diagnostic information to IBM Support.

Procedure

To submit diagnostic information to IBM Support:

Open a support case.
Draft comment:
If you provide a topic to help users open a PMR (such as a topic about IBM Support Assistant or the Service Request tool), link to that topic in step 1. If you do not provide a topic about opening a PMR, you can either add a sentence here and provide external links to these tools (links can be copied from step 4 in this task) or add nothing else to the step.
Collect the diagnostic data that you need. Diagnostic data helps reduce the time that it takes to resolve your support case. You can collect the diagnostic data manually or automatically:
Draft comment:
The content in the choice list assumes that users can collect data manually or automatically. If that is not the case, rewrite the introduction to the list and remove the choice list, keeping only the method that applies.
- Collect the data manually.
  Draft comment:
  If you provide Collecting data topics in your troubleshooting information, add a sentence "See <link to Collecting data for Product X. Edit the sentence as appropriate, for example if you have multiple Collecting data topics, you can include links to all of them.
- Collect the data automatically.
  Draft comment:
  You need to fill in the details here. If you mention the ISA Lite or ISA WB tools in your set of troubleshooting topics, mention the tools that apply here and link to the topics for those tools. For example, "Use ISA Lite to collect the data that you need. See <link to your tools topic that mentions ISA Lite>." If you do not mention the ISA Lite or ISA WB tools in your set of topics, add external links to the web pages for the ISA Lite or ISA WB tools on the IBM Support site here.
  If automatic data collection is not available for your product, remove the choice list and mention only the manual method for step 2.
Compress the files by using the .zip or .tar file format.
Transfer the files to IBM.
You can use one of the following methods to transfer the files to IBM:
Draft comment:
Remove any of the following list items that do not apply directly to your product. If only one bullet remains, remove the list and use a paragraph format.
- IBM Support Assistant
- Standard data upload methods: see Enhanced Customer Data Repository (ECuRep) - Send data
- Secure data upload methods: see Enhanced Customer Data Repository (ECuRep) - Send data
- Email

Receiving information from IBM Support

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Occasionally an IBM technical-support representative might ask you to download diagnostic tools or other files. You can use FTP to download these files.

Before you begin

Ensure that your IBM technical-support representative provided you with the preferred server to use for downloading the files and the exact directory and file names to access.

Procedure

To download files from IBM Support:

Use FTP to connect to the site that your IBM technical-support representative provided and log in as anonymous. Use your email address as the password.
Change to the appropriate directory:
1. Change to the /fromibm directory.
```
cd fromibm
```
2. Change to the directory that your IBM technical-support representative provided.
```
cd nameofdirectory
```
Enable binary mode for your session.
```
binary
```
Use the get command to download the file that your IBM technical-support representative specified.
```
get filename.extension
```
End your FTP session.
```
quit
```