MustGather: Instana Websphere Sensor - z/OS

Overview

The script instana-zOS-mustgather.sh is designed to collect diagnostic data for the Instana Websphere Sensor running on z/OS. It simplifies troubleshooting by gathering logs, configuration details, and host information into a compressed tarball for easy sharing with support teams or for archival.

  Key Features

• Comprehensive data collection: Gathers Websphere Feature flag is enabled or not, user privileges information, Instana Agent logs.
• Built-in checks: Verifies required tools (e.g., bash, tar) and ensures critical resources exist before proceeding.
• Tarball creation: Finalizes all collected data into a single archive (.tgz) for easy distribution.

Prerequisites

• bash
• tar
• A shell that supports set -euo pipefail (modern Bash or similar).

• Ensure you have the necessary permissions to read and collect data and copy logs from instana-agent/data/log in your zOS-USS layer.

No additional system configurations are required beyond the standard tools listed above.

Usage

• Clone or copy the script into an environment where the above prerequisites are met.
• Make the script executable (if needed):

  • chmod +x instana-zOS-mustgather.sh

• Run the script:

  • ./instana-zOS-mustgather.sh

Command-Line Arguments 

This script asks as part of the command-line arguments, the path of the Instana-agent directory

Exanple:

/u/user1/instana-agent/

• A new directory, for example:
  • instana-agent-zOS-mustgather-20250324-123056/
• containing:
  • tag-for-bin-files.txt, tag-for-etc-files.txt, tmp-instana-files.txt, websphere-zOS-Prereq-output.txt.
• A compressed tarball (.tgz) of that directory for sharing or storage.

Examples

./instana-zOS-mustgather.sh

After the script completes, the following output is observed
For example:

tar xzf insTana-agent-zOS-mustgather-20250324-123056.tgz

ls instana-agent-zOS-mustgather-20250324-123056/instana-agent/