Message logging and tracing

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Transcoding Technology sends events to the message and trace logs. Message logging records informational messages about normal operations as well as warnings and error messages. Tracing provides more detailed information for troubleshooting problems. Messages are translated into the language specified for your machine. Trace records are not translated. By default, message logging is turned on and tracing is turned off. You can turn tracing on and off by selecting the TranscodingTraceLogger component in the Enable Tracing page in the Administration Portal.

Message logging

 

Message categories

Three categories of messages are written to the message log file:

• Information:records normal events. Use these messages to determine whether expected operations occur, for example, to verify that a configuration change takes place as expected.
• Warning:indicates a possible problem. Requests might still be handled successfully.
• Error:indicates a definite problem requiring administrator attention. Requests will probably not be handled successfully.

 

Message files

Message files are created in the <PortalRoot>/IBMTrans/log directory. The first message file created is named TranscoderMessages1.log. When the maximum size is reached, this file will be renamed to TranscoderMessages.log and a new TranscoderMessages1.log file created for new messages. The default message file size is 512 kilobytes. See the Portal documentation for information regarding changing the file size. TranscoderMessages1.log is always the newest file.

 

Viewing messages

You can view the messages in the active log file, TranscoderMessages1.log, You can also open the other message files with your favorite editor.

Tracing

Tracing records the specific behavior of Transcoding Technology, recording information useful in the diagnosis of problems.

 

Trace files

Trace files are created in the <PortalRoot>/IBMTrans/log directory. The first trace file created is named TranscoderTrace1.log. When the maximum size is reached, this file will be renamed to TranscoderTrace2.log and a new TranscoderTrace1.log file created for new messages. The default trace file size is 512 kilobytes. See the Portal documentation for information regarding changing the file size. TranscoderTrace1.log is always the newest file.

When the maximum number of trace files has been filled, the oldest file will be deleted, the suffix number of each remaining file will be increased by one, and a new TranscoderTrace1.log will be created for new messages. A new file is begun when Transcoding Technology is restarted. The default number of trace files is 3. See the Portal documentation for information regarding changing the maximum number of trace files.

 

Enabling Request Viewer for Transcoding Technology

The Request Viewer for Transcoding Technology is disabled by default. The following messages in the appserver-out.log related to the Request Viewer should be ignored if you are not using the transcoding request viewer monitor.

IPX1041 The plugin named com.ibm.wbi.viewer.ViewerServerPlugin could not be initialized.
TPX1084E Underlying error detail: com.ibm.wbi.PluginException: RMI is disabled.

To enable Request Viewer, perform the following tasks:

1. Stop WebSphere Portal.
   
2. Change your working directory to where the transcoding component is installed. Transcoding is installed in <portal Root>/IBMTrans on Windows, AIX, x86 Linux, zLinux, and Sun Solaris environments
   
3. Change the transcoding configuration to enable RMI registry and two of the transcoding plugins, DatabaseWatcher and ViewerServer by performing the following steps.

   • To change the transcoding configuration:
     1. Run the following command (ExportResources.bat for Windows) to export the necessary transcoding configuration to WTPResources.xml file under the root directory of Transcoding Technology ./ExportResources.sh -rt setup -rt plugin,DatabaseWatcherPlugin,ViewerServerPlugin
     2. Open WTPResources.xml for editing and make the following changes.
        • Enable DatabaseWatcher and ViewerServer plugin by adding the following line to each <Plugin> tag:
          <Enable>true</Enable>
        • Enable RMI registry by making sure there is <Enable>true</Enable> line after the <RMIRegistry> tag.
          Below is an example showing the partial contents of WTPResources.xml with changes in bold.
          
          <Plugin>
          <Enable>true</Enable>
          <Folder<IBM</Folder>
          <SelectorName>ViewerServerPlugin</SelectorName>
          ...
          </Plugin>
          <Plugin>
          <Enable>true</Enable>
          <Folder>IBM</Folder>
          <SelectorName> DatabaseWatcherPlugin</SelectorName>
          ...
          </Plugin>
          <Setup>
          ...
          <RMIRegistry>
          <Enable>true</Enable>
          ...
          </RMIRegistry>
          ...
          </Setup>

     3. Import the changes back into transcoding using the following command from the root directory of Transcoding Technology (use ImportResources.bat for Windows)
        
        ./ImportResources.sh
        
        For Windows:
        
        ImportResources.bat
        
        

4. Copy ViewerServerPlugin.jar from the plugins folder as ibm_ViewerServerPlugin.jar under addedPluginJars in the root directory of Transcoding Technology.
   
   cp plugins/ViewerServerPlugin.jar addedPluginJars/ibm_ViewerServerPlugin.jar
   
   For Windows:
   
   copy plugins\ViewerServerPlugin.jar addedPluginsJars\ibm_ViewerServerPlugin.jar
   
5. Extract StartRegistry.sh script (StartRegistry.bat for Windows) from wtpscripts.jar in the root directory of Transcoding Technology using the following command.
   
   jar xvf wtpscripts.jar StartRegsitry.sh
   
   For Windows:
   
   jar xvf wtpscripts.jar StartRegistry.bat
   
   
6. Always verify that the RMI registry is started before starting Portal Server by running following command from the root directory of Transcoding Technology.
   
   ./StartRegistry.sh -k
   
   For Windows:
   
   StartRegistry.bat -k
   
   
7. Restart Portal Server.

Important: Step 6 must be performed each time before starting Portal Server. You can do this by modifying the startup/login script on your platform to include StartRegistry script. (10553)

 

Running Request Viewer

1. Extract RequestViewer.sh (RequestViewer.bat for windows) from wtpscripts.jar in <portal Root>/IBMTrans. Use the following command:
   
   jar xvf wtpscripts.jar RequestViewer.sh
   
   For Windows:
   
   jar xvf wtpscripts.jar RequestViewer.bat
   Each time a navigation page is requested from a wml device, the contents of that page will be shown in Request Viewer. If a portlet is requested, one entry will show up for the page itself, then another if the portlet goes through transcoding. Therefore, you see the state of the request as it completes the transcoding process.
2. Launch RequestViewer by running the following command from <portal Root>/IBMTrans :
   
   ./RequestViewer.sh
   
   For Windows:
   
   RequestViewer.bat

Gathering troubleshooting data

If you have a problem while running Transcoding Technology, there is a certain set of information that will be useful in troubleshooting. The RASCollect program will package the necessary files and settings to make it easy to gather diagnostic information. To use this function, execute RASCollect.bat on Windows NT or Windows 2000 or RASCollect.sh on AIX, Solaris, or Linux. This will create a zip or tar file that you can send to your service representative. The file will be created in the Transcoding Technology log directory. It will be named RASCollect.zip on Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Linux and RASCollect.tar on AIX or Solaris.

 

See also

• Resources
• Solutions