Enable trace

Trace for an appserver process is enabled while the server process runs by using the administrative console. You can configure the application server to start in a trace-enabled state by setting the appropriate configuration properties. You can only enable trace for an application client or stand-alone process at process startup.

 

Trace strings

By default, the trace service for all WAS components is disabled. To request a change to the current state of the trace service, a trace string is passed to the trace service. This trace string encodes the information detailing which level of trace to enable or disable and for which components.

You can type in Trace strings, or construct them with a user-friendly GUI in the administrative console. Trace strings must conform to a specific grammar for processing by the trace service. The specification of this grammar follows...

TRACESTRING=COMPONENT_TRACE_STRING[:COMPONENT_TRACE_STRING]* 

 COMPONENT_TRACE_STRING=COMPONENT_NAME=LEVEL=STATE[,LEVEL=STATE]* 

LEVEL = all | entryExit | debug | event 

STATE = enabled | disabled 

COMPONENT_NAME = COMPONENT | GROUP

The COMPONENT_NAME is the name of a component or group registered with the trace service. Typically, WAS components register using a fully qualified Java classname, for example com.ibm.servlet.engine.ServletEngine. In addition, you can use a wildcard character of asterisk (*) to terminate a component name and indicate multiple classes or packages. For example, use a component name of com.ibm.servlet.* to specify all components whose names begin with com.ibm.servlet.

Examples of legal trace strings include

com.ibm.ejs.ras.ManagerAdmin=debug=enabled 
com.ibm.ejs.ras.ManagerAdmin=all=enabled,event=disabled 
com.ibm.ejs.ras.*=all=enabled 
com.ibm.ejs.ras.*=all=enabled:com.ibm.ws.ras=debug=enabled,entryexit=enabled 

Trace strings cannot contain blanks.

Trace strings are processed from left to right. Specifying a trace string like

abc.*=all=enabled,event=disabled

first enables all trace for all components whose names start with abc, then disables event tracing for those same components. This means that the trace string

abc.*=all=enabled,event=disabled

is equivalent to

abc.*=debug=enabled,entryexit=enabled

 

See Also

Enabling trace at server startup
Enabling trace on a running server
Enabling trace on client and standalone applications
Managing the appserver trace service

 

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