Diagnostic message services

The following diagnostic message services and their service specific attributes, specified under the DiagnosticSystemMessages, DiagnosticMessages and DiagnosticMessagesTemplate stanzas of our configuration files can be defined:

File

This service sends any unfiltered messages to a file in a similar way to the QMErrorLog service. Either the existing textual format or the JSON format specified is used depending on the specified Format. By default, there are three files called AMQERR01.LOG, AMQERR02.LOG, and AMQERR03.LOG or AMQERR01.json, AMQERR02.json, and AMQERR03.json, depending upon the FilePrefix property, and these rollover based on the configured size.

The following attributes are supported in a File stanza only:

FilePath

The path to where the log files are written. The default is the same location as the AMQERR01.log files, that is system or queue manager. The path must be absolute, but can include replaceable inserts. For example:

+MQ_Q_MGR_DATA_PATH+

The full path to the parent of the queue manager diagnostics messages directory. The default values are:

• On UNIX platforms: /var/mqm/qmgrs/<QM_name>
• on Windows, C:\Program Data\IBM\MQ\qmgrs\<QM_name>

+MQ_DATA_PATH+

The full path to the parent of the system diagnostics messages directory. The default values are:

• On UNIX platforms :/var/mqm
• On Windows: C:\Program Data\IBM\MQ

We must create this path with appropriate permissions, if it is not using the existing errors directory.

FilePrefix

The prefix of the log files. The default is AMQERR.

FileSize

The size at which the log rolls over. The default is 32MB, as with the ErrorLogSize property of the QMErrorLog stanza on UNIX, Linux, and Windows, which is semantically identical.

We can set the size of the log using the MQMAXERRORLOGSIZE attribute in the mq.ini file.

Format

The format of the file. The value can be either text (for additional QMErrorLog style services) or json, which is the default.

The suffix of the file is either .LOG or .json based on the setting of this attribute.For example, edit the qm.ini file of the queue manager, and add the following stanza:

DiagnosticMessages:
   Service = File
   Name = JSONLogs
   Format = json
   FilePrefix = AMQERR

After restarting, the queue manager will have AMQERR0x.json files in its ERRORS directory.

We can define multiple File services. This allows configuration as shown in the following examples, where messages of different tags are split over different sets of logs:

DiagnosticMessages:
  Name=ErrorsToFile
  Service=File
  Severities=E+
  FilePrefix=OnlyErrors

DiagnosticMessages:
  Name=NonErrorstoFile
  Service=File
  Severities=1 W
  FilePrefix=Information

Syslog

The Syslog service is not available on Windows or IBM i

We can define only one Syslog service, and the Syslog service sends any unfiltered messages to syslog using the JSON format diagnostic messages specification. The information is added to syslog in the order shown in the table, starting with the msgID and inserts.

The severity of the message is mapped to the syslog level in the following way:

Severity	Level
0	LOG_INFO
10	LOG_WARNING
20	LOG_ERR
30	LOG_ERR
40	LOG_ALERT
50	LOG_ALERT

The following attribute is supported in a syslog stanza only:

Ident

Defines the ident value associated with the syslog entries. The default value is ibm-mq.

The following example shows error messages being sent to Syslog:

DiagnosticMessages:
  Name=ErrorsToSyslog
  Ident=mq 
  Service=Syslog
  Severities=E+
  

See Diagnostic message service stanzas for more information on generic stanza attributes.

1. For the File service only, we can have multiple stanzas, each with a different name. Only the definition, using the final name in the sequence, takes effect.
2. Changes to the value of a stanza come into effect only when the queue manager is restarted.

Parent topic: Diagnostic message service stanzas