Preparing error data for IBM Support
If you have a problem with CICS Explorer®, you might need to send the error logs and other information to IBM® Support. You can use CICS Explorer to collect all necessary error information in a single compressed file, ready to send.
About this task
Procedure
- If the CICS Explorer user interface is working:
- In the CICS SM perspective, click File > Trace > Collect Service Data on the main menu for the workbench.
- In the Save Service data as file window, select the location
where you want to save the compressed file, and click Save.
The service data is saved as a compressed file. The filename is in the format CICSExplorerServiceData-date-time.zip, where date and time are numbers that indicate the date and time of the collected data, for example CICSExplorerServiceData-20150318-080311.zip. Remember to record your actions at the time the failure occurred, to aid further analysis of the problem.
- If the CICS Explorer user interface is
not usable, collect the logs and other Explorer working files (such as settings) from the Eclipse workspace folder. Use an archiving utility (a
program that creates .zip, .rar,
.tar, or .tar.gz files) to collect directory
content.
- If you use the default on Windows, use the location C:\Users\$User\.zosexplorer.
- If you use the default on Linux®, use the location /home/$username/.zosexplorer.
- If you use the default on macOS, use the location /Users/$username/.zosexplorer.
- If you use an alternative workspace, which is described in the Starting multiple instances of CICS Explorer Help, use that location.
- Optional: Optionally, if the UI is up but unresponsive, follow these instructions to take a Java™ Thread Dump. The dump might provide useful information for IBM Support.
- If you use CICS Explorer on Linux, perform the following procedures:
- Find out the process identifier of your CICS Explorer by using any system tool. For example, enter the following command from a shell (command line):
$ ps -ef | grep cicsexplorer - From a shell, invoke
kill -QUIT <process_id>. A file named javacore.YYYYMMDD.<other>.txt is created in the CICS Explorer directory.
- Find out the process identifier of your CICS Explorer by using any system tool. For example, enter the following command from a shell (command line):
- If you use CICS Explorer on Windows, perform the following procedures:
- Ensure that you start CICS Explorer with the -consolelog parameter, so that CICS Explorer opens a shell (command line) window only for output besides a graphical UI window.
- If a dump is not taken, press Ctrl+Break on the command line to request a dump.
- From the consolelog window, you will see a message that includes the
location and name of the dump, similar
to:
JVMDUMP010I Java dump written to C:\...\CICS Explorer\javacore.20090610.092732.6908.0001.txt.
- If you use CICS Explorer on Linux, perform the following procedures:
- If you think CICS Explorer shows an incorrect output, create screen captures of the CICS Explorer screen as image files (.bmp or .jpg). These images might provide useful information for IBM Support.
- When you get an error, gather the following additional data based on the type of the
connection you use:
- For a CICSPlex® SM connection, the complete job log
(including CICS® TDQ output) of the WUI server and the CMAS to
which the WUI server connects.
If you receive a bad response from the CICS management client interface (CMCI) or the CICSPlex SM application programming interface (API), for example FAILED or EXCEPTION response, collect the unformatted auxiliary trace data sets from the WUI server and the CMAS to which the WUI server connects.
- For a single server (SMSS) version in a stand-alone CICS region, the complete job log (including TDQ output).
- For other types of connections, the required documentation varies. For example, for CICS Performance Analyzer, a copy of the input file that is used on the request is useful.
- For a CICSPlex® SM connection, the complete job log
(including CICS® TDQ output) of the WUI server and the CMAS to
which the WUI server connects.
- If you have a problem with the CICSSecurity Discovery perspective, supply the following additional
information:
- The security metadata file (.esm) that was loaded, and if applicable, the
security discovery data file (.sdd) that was loaded.
If you are concerned that your .esm or .sdd file might contain sensitive information, you can obfuscate their data by using the DFH$SOBS sample. It copies the .esm and .sdd files and obfuscates certain details depending on the value of the HIDE.
If you obfuscated your files using DFH$SOBS, refer to the obfuscated values rather than the original values when describing the problem to IBM support.
- The latest saved version of the security definitions in CICS Explorer (.sdm).
- The security metadata file (.esm) that was loaded, and if applicable, the
security discovery data file (.sdd) that was loaded.