Diagnostic Tools: Logs and Traces

Logs and traces provide information about the health of your system. System administrators configure and use them for diagnostic purposes and to troubleshoot potential problems.

About Logs

All components in an Automic Automation system write information about their activities to logs, which contain the standard output and errors for each component. Every component generates logs automatically and stores them in the following locations:

Automation Engine, Agents, Utilities and Service Manager in the temp directory in the respective root folders. You have the possibility to change their location (names and paths) in the respective INI files.
AWI in the /osgi-tmp folder, see Log File Location.
For the Automation Engine DB, you use the DB logs.

When a components starts, a new log is generated. They rotate as soon as they reach a specific size. The log file names are numbered sequentially to help you identify their order.

About Traces

Traces also contain the output and error information but they are much more detailed and they are not enabled by default. When enabled, traces generate a huge amount of data, which can have an impact on your system's performance. Typically, you will enable them for advanced troubleshooting when Broadcom's Support team instructs you to do so explicitly. Your support case assistant knows which values to set to collect targeted data with the lowest impact on your system performance. As soon as traces are collected, you should disable them.

Notes:

By default, log and trace files are overwritten every time the system is restarted. However, to keep older files for later use, you can specify the number of history files to be kept by using the logcount= and trccount= parameters. The file name must contain the ## string which is then replaced by 00 in the actual file name. The history files are named 01, 02, and so on, and are moved with every restart. The oldest file (with the highest number) is deleted and all other files are renamed (number is increased by 1).
The logging information is also stored in the AE database and can be retrieved by using statistics/logging.

Configuring Logs and Traces in AAKE Environments

In Automic Automation Kubernetes Edition, you configure the logs and traces in the values.yaml file. If you want to change the trace level, you can do so in the ae-properties section of the configmap. For more information, see Configuring Container-Based Systems.

Configuring Logs and Traces in On-Premises Environments

The INI file of each component in and Automic Automation system contains fields to configure the logs and traces default settings. Logs are configured using the INI files exclusively. Traces can be configured using both the INI files and AWI. For more information about the log and traces configuration in the INI files, see Automation Engine.

Configuring the Logs

You define the log settings in the [GLOBAL] section of the INI files (Automation Engine, Agents, Utilities and Service Manager) using the following parameters:

logging= - Name of the log file

Required: Yes
logcount= - Number of historical log files

Required: No (00)

In the case of the Utilities, if the logging= parameter is not defined, the utilities create the following log files by default:

Windows: .\UCYBDBxx_LOG_##.TXT
UNIX: ./UCYBDBxx_LOG_##.TXT

Where xx stands for the abbreviation of a particular utility:

AR: AE DB Archive
CC: AE DB Client Copy
LD: AE DB Load
RE: AE DB Reorg
UN: AE DB Unload

The same is true if the INI file cannot be found because it does not exist in the specified folder. This means that logs are generated event in case of incorrect settings. For more information, see Start Parameters - Utilities.

Configuring the Traces

You can configure the traces both in the INI files and, in the case of traces for Agents and processes, in AWI. If you specify the values in the INI file and then change them directly in AWI, the AWI values overwrite those in the INI file.

Configuring the Traces in the INI File

You define the trace settings in the [TRACE] section using the following parameters:

file= - Name of the trace file

Required: Yes
trccount= - Number of historic trace files

Required: No (00)
different parameters (such as tcp/ip=, database=, and so on) - Control of the trace content

Required: No (0)

Configuring the Traces in AWI

You can configure the traces for Agents and processes also directly in AWI. For more information, see:

Job Status in Log Files

During the execution of jobs, messages providing information about job states are written to the logs. The following states exist:

A - Status ended

Job ended with a return code that is not equal 0.
E - Status ended

Job ended on status ENDED_OK.
R - Status running

This status is written to the log file periodically while the job is being executed.
V - Status vanished

This status only occurs when the agent cannot find a job anymore that it has started. For more information, see Stages of Job Processing.
W - Status waiting

Job has not yet started and is in a waiting condition.

Using Script Functions to Retrieve Logging and Tracing Information

The Automation Engine scripting language provides the following script functions that you can use in your scripts to output values to log or trace files_