Diagnosing problems (using diagnosis tools)
Various diagnosis tools are provided to help determine the source and impact of problems occurring in the application serving environment.
The purpose of this section is to aid you in understanding why the enterprise application, application server, or WebSphere Application Server is not working and to help resolve the problem. Unlike performance tuning, which focuses on solving problems associated with slow processes and non-optimized performance, problem determination focuses on finding solutions to functional problems.
- If deploying or running an application results in exceptions such as ClassNotFoundException, use the Class Loader Viewer to diagnose problems with class loaders.
- If we already have an error message and want to quickly look up its explanation and recommended response, look up the message by expanding the Messages section of the Information Center under Reference > Messages.
- For the basic or traditional log and trace infrastructure, and need help finding error and warning messages, interpreting messages, and configuring log files, see Use basic or traditional message logs to troubleshoot applications.
- For the High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) log and trace infrastructure, and need help finding error and warning messages, interpreting messages, and configuring log files, see Use High Performance Extensible Logging to troubleshoot applications.
- Difficult problems can require the use of tracing, which exposes the low-level flow of control and interactions between components. For help in understanding and using traces, see Work with trace.
- For help in viewing diagnostic information like dumps, error logs and CTRACE information, see View diagnostic information
For help in using settings or tools to help diagnose the problem, see Work with troubleshooting tools. Some of these tools are bundled with the product, and others are freely downloadable.
- To learn how to work with Diagnostic Providers, see Work with Diagnostic Providers..
- To find out how to look up documented problems, common mistakes, WebSphere Application Server prerequisites, and other problem-determination information on the WAS public website, or to obtain technical support from IBM, see Obtaining help from IBM.
The IBM developer kits: Diagnosis documentation describes debugging techniques and the diagnostic tools that are available to help solve problems with Java. It also gives guidance on how to submit problems to IBM. We can find the guide at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/diagnosis/.
- The Troubleshoot IBM Developer Kit for Java describes debugging techniques and the diagnostic tools that are available to help solve problems with Java. It also gives guidance on how to submit problems to IBM.
- For current information available from IBM Support on known problems and their resolution, see the WebSphere Application Server Product support page. For last minute updates, limitations, and known problems, refer to the Release notes.
- Before opening a PMR, there is MustGather information that we need to collect to send to IBM Support. This information assists IBM Support in identifying and resolving the problem. We can use the IBM Support Assistant Data Collector to automatically collect the MustGather information from the system.
- To automatically gather Must gather type information from the system, see IBM Support Assistant Data Collector.
Related concepts
Troubleshooting help from IBM
Related tasks
Troubleshooting class loaders
Choose and using diagnosis tools and controls on z/OS Use basic or traditional message logs to troubleshoot applications Use High Performance Extensible Logging to troubleshoot applications Add logging and tracing to the application Configure the hang detection policy Configure the memory leak policy Debugging applications Work with trace
Work with troubleshooting tools Work with Diagnostic Providers Configure Java logging using the administrative console
CORBA minor codes
Error Dump and Cleanup interface
Automation and recovery scenarios and guidelines
Types of configuration variables Diagnose and fix problems: Resources for learning Debugging Service details Messages Release notes
Related information:
Configuration problem settings
Support Portal