Collecting an agent trace from startup using JCL

To collect a trace of a Managed File Transfer for z/OS® agent that is being administered using JCL from startup, you need to set various properties need in the agent.properties file for that agent before it is started.

About this task

To collect a trace from startup, complete the following steps.

Procedure

1. Locate the agent.properties file for the agent that needs to be traced. The agent.properties file can be found in the BFG_DATA/mqft/config/coordination_qmgr_name/agents/agent_name directory.
2. Edit the files and add entries for the following properties:
   • trace=trace specification

     The trace property determines the internal classes and packages that are to be traced. Unless otherwise specified by your IBM® Support representative, set this property to the value com.ibm.wmqfte=all.

   • traceFiles=number of trace files to use
   • traceSize=size of each trace file, in MB

     The traceFiles and traceSize properties are used to control the amount of trace data that is collected. You should set these properties to large values, to collect as much trace data as possible.

   For example, to collect 1GB of wrapping trace using the trace specification com.ibm.wmqfte=all, add the following lines to the agent.properties file:

   trace=com.ibm.wmqfte=all
   traceFiles=5
   traceSize=200
   

   This results in the agent writing trace data to a maximum of 5 files, where each file has a size of 200MB.

   For more information on these agent properties, see The MFT agent.properties file.

3. Locate the data set containing the JCL for the agent that needs to be traced.
4. Submit the BFGAGSP member within the data set to stop the agent.
5. Restart the agent, by submitting the BFGAGST member in the data set .
6. Reproduce the issue.
7. Submit the BFGAGSP member in the data set to stop the agent again.
8. Edit the agent.properties file for the agent, and remove the entries for the trace, traceFiles, and traceSize properties that you added in step 2. This ensures that trace is not enabled the next time you restart the agent.

Results

The resultant trace files are written to the BFG_DATA/mqft/logs/coordination_qmgr_name/agents/agent_name/logs/trace%PID% directory, where %PID% is the process identifier for the agent.