IBM WebSphere MQ for AIX Trace V5.3, V6 and V7 - Middleware News

WebSphere MQ V6 and V7 on AIX now supports the standard WebSphere MQ trace facility as well as the AIX system trace. It is recommended that V6 and V7 customers use the WebSphere MQ trace commands unless requested by the WebSphere MQ service team to use the AIX system trace hooks.

Follow the instructions listed below to start, stop and format WebSphere MQ for AIX trace. Trace files are written to the directory /var/mqm/trace, so delete or relocate old trace files before beginning a new trace.

• Start trace for every WebSphere MQ process:
  strmqtrc -e

Or start trace only for one queue manager:

strmqtrc -m MY.QMGR

Or start a high detail trace for one queue manager:

strmqtrc -t all -t detail -m MY.QMGR

Or start a high detail wrapping trace and limit the file size to ~5MB:

strmqtrc -l 5 -t all -t detail -m MY.QMGR

• End all tracing:
  endmqtrc -a

• Format the trace files:
  dspmqtrc *.TRC

Or format wrapping trace files:

dspmqtrc *.TRC *.TRS

The trace formatter program converts binary files named AMQppppp.TRC (where ppppp is the process identifier or pid which created the file) into readable files named AMQppppp.FMT.

If you used a wrapping trace, then each time a .TRC reaches the size limit MQ renames it to a .TRS extension and starts a new .TRC file. The trace formatter can convert both files to a single formatted file, but only if you format the .TRC and .TRS files at the same time, as shown above.

Send formatted trace files to IBM support unless binary traces are specifically requested. To save space, compress the formatted trace files with compress, zip, gzip, or bzip2. 

WebSphere MQ for AIX Trace v5.3

Follow the instructions listed below to start, stop and format the AIX trace on v5.3.

Note: WebSphere MQ V6 and V7 customers should review the second part of this section. The additional trace function described in part two was added at WebSphere MQ v6.0.

• Start trace
  The following command starts a trace of WebSphere MQ data which will grow to approximately 50MB in size before wrapping. You can change the maximum size, but be aware that a small size may prevent useful information from being captured. The larger you make the file size the better chance of capturing the trace you need. You can choose any output file name you wish, but be sure there is ample storage for the trace:
  trace -a -j30D,30E -o /path/to/trace.out -L 50000000
• End trace:
  Because AIX traces wrap by default, it is important to stop tracing as soon as the problem occurs. If you delay in stopping the trace, or if your trace file size is too small, the information you hope to gather may be overwritten by new trace data:
  trcstop

• Format trace:
  
  trcrpt -t /usr/mqm/lib/amqtrc.fmt
  /path/to/trace.out > /path/to/trace.fmt

Send formatted trace files to IBM support unless binary traces are specifically requested. If the IBM support team asks you to gather additional trace hooks (not just 30D and 30E) then please send the binary trace file instead.