Troubleshooting Guide

Alerts

An alert is an error notification issued when a severe error occurs. It can be sent to a central machine, for the attention of network administrators.

Alerts are written to both the DB2 diagnostic log (db2diag.log) and to the alert log (db2alert.log). Like the db2diag.log, the db2alert.log file contains the following information:

• The location of an alert error condition
• A diagnostic message explaining the reason for any errors

Unlike entries in the db2diag.log, however, db2alert.log entries can be viewed more readily by system administrators and others from system-wide error logging facilities:

• For AIX and other UNIX-based environments, the syslog file. See Using the System Error Log (syslog).
• For OS/2, FFST/2 and SNA alerts. See Using the FFST for OS/2 Utility.
• For Windows NT, the event log. See Diagnostic Tools for Windows NT.

SNMP Alerts

If the DB2 SNMP subagent is activated, any DB2 alerts will produce a corresponding SNMP trap. Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a widely available and well-accepted protocol for distributed management, and is supported by DB2 for OS/2, DB2 for Windows NT, and DB2 for AIX.

DB2 supports SNMP with agents and subagents:

• The SystemView product provides an SNMP agent for the MVS, OS/2, Windows NT, and AIX operating systems. The SystemView SNMP agent provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI) service layer through which applications such as TME or NetFinity can access information about a particular machine. The SystemView Agent also provides DMI to Distributed Protocol Interface (DPI) mapping so that:
  • Subagents at a workstation can use DMI, or DPI via SNMP, to communicate information
  • Management applications can use DMI, or DPI via SNMP, to gather information

  The SystemView agent must be at the DPI Version 2 level. It is shipped with TCP/IP Version 3, and with DB2 for Windows 95 and DB2 for Windows NT.

• The DB2 SNMP subagent is a resident DB2 program. When invoked, it attempts to connect to the SNMP agent and to register the RDBMS MIB sub-tree to that agent. If the SNMP agent is not present, the DB2 SNMP subagent will periodically retry to connect and register to the SNMP agent. Once invoked and connected, the DB2 SNMP subagent generates alerts to an SNMP manager in the case of a severe DB2 error (for example, a condition that requires operator intervention).

  The DB2 SNMP subagent complies with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard (RFC 1697). It also supports the attributes of the Internet Engineering Task Force Relational Database (RDBMS) Management Information Base (MIB), also known as the IETF RDBMS MIB. The IETF RDBMS MIB is an emerging industry standard for management of relational databases (RFC 1697).

Invocation

DB2 has a built-in SNMP subagent designed to work with any SystemView agent installed on the same machine, using DPI via SNMP. To configure this subagent, use the snmpcfg command. (Alternatively, click on the snmpcfg icon in the IBM SystemView Agent folder that is available on Windows NT.)

On the window that appears, you can configure the SNMP subagent to apply to a specific community name ("public" is the default), and to send trap information from this community to particular IP addresses.

To start the SNMP agent and the DB2 SNMP subagent:

For Windows NT and OS/2:

1. Start DB2.
2. Start the SystemView agent SNMP daemon from the SNMPD icon in the IBM SystemView Agent folder, or with the snmpd command.
3. Start the DB2 SNMP subagent with the command db2snmpd.

To stop the DB2 SNMP subagent, use the command db2snmpd -end.

For AIX:

1. Start DB2.
2. Start the SNMP daemon agent with the snmpd command. You must have root authority to issue this command.
3. Start the DB2 SNMP subagent with the command db2snmpd.

To stop the DB2 SNMP subagent, use the command db2snmpd -end.

If you have problems starting the SNMP agent or the DB2 SNMP subagent, you should contact DB2 Customer Service. DB2 Customer Service will provide guidance on how to turn on DPI internal debugging and tracing. DPI tracing enables the display of a hexadecimal dump incoming and outgoing DPI packets.

There are two other parameters that may be used on the db2snmpd. They are:

   db2snmpd -h <host name> -c <community>

The host name means the host or local host name that is associated with your SNMP setup. The default is the local host's HOSTNAME. You should replace the local host's HOSTNAME with whatever host or local host name that is associated with your SNMP configuration.

The community means the community to which the DB2 portion of the MIB will be accessible and the community used for reporting error conditions. The default is "public". You should replace "public" with whatever community you have set up for this purpose within your SNMP configuration.