IBM APM 8.1 - Synthetic agent SN - Useful info - tips - Part 1 of 3

Content

1) After you have uploaded a Selenium test script to the APM server, using APM UI console and the "Synthetic Script Manager" feature :

1a) the script should be uploaded into the server in:

/opt/ibm/wlp/usr/servers/apmui/tmp

1b) /opt/ibm/wlp/usr/servers/apmui/logs/messages.log on server should contain a line like:

com.ibm.smai.synthetic.ui.utils.ScriptUploadTools            I fileMap: {fileSize=xxxB, scriptName=<script name> }

1c) on the Synthetic agent side,

- /opt/ibm/apm/agent/logs/ksn_trace*.log file should contain lines like:

INFO - <agent host> - Thread-xxx - com.ibm.csi.apm.synthetics.playback.schedule.ScriptListLoader.parseConfig - Configuration File: xxx.xml contains [ScheduledScript [
scriptName=<script name>, scriptType=html, active=true, date=<date>, fileName=<script name>, scriptContents=***BASE64Encoding***, application=<application name>, offset=5, interval=5, next=<date>, transactionSteps=***BASE64Encoding***, transactionVariables=***BASE64Encoding***]]

FINER - <agent host> - Thread-xxx -com.ibm.csi.apm.synthetics.playback.Playback.validateScriptProperties(Map scriptProperties) - ENTRY RECORDING_FILE_PATH=

/opt/ibm/apm/agent/localconfig/sn/schedules/scripts/<transaction name>-<script name>/<script name>.html

- /opt/ibm/apm/agent/localconfig/sn/schedules/scripts/<transaction name>/ directory should contain the script to playback.

1d) If you encounter issue in uploading script to APM server, open the Firefox Dev tools (Press F12) and upload again, in the Network panel, click the "POST" entry and export the HAR into file, then send file to IBM support for further checking.

REMARKS:

- Currently Synthetic Agent (SN) 8.1.4 doesn't support customised Firefox profile.

- Synthetic Agent is launching a new profile in Firefox with some changes in it for each playback.

- Currently Synthetic Agent is leaving some debris in /tmp filesystem after Selenium scripts are played back, see :

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/0587adbc-8477-431f-8c68-9226adea11ed/entry/IBM_APM_8_1_4_Synthetic_Playback_Agent_SN_many_webdriver_directories_in_tmp?lang=en_us

- Currently, you can install the Synthetic playback Agent (SN) 8.1 only on Linux OS, see:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/0587adbc-8477-431f-8c68-9226adea11ed/entry/IBM_APM_8_1_Synthetic_agent_SN_installation_on_Windows_OS?lang=en

Development team confirmed that SN agent 8.1.4  was certified  and does support RHEL v7.4 and v7.5 on x86_64 architecture. SPCR reports have to be updated with such info.