The collector tool gathers information about your WebSphere Application Server installation and packages it in a Java archive (JAR) file that you can send to IBM Customer Support to assist in determining and analyzing your problem. Information in the JAR file includes logs, property files, configuration files, operating system and Java data, and the presence and level of each software prerequisite.
The sort of information that you gather is not something that most people use. In fact, the collector tool packages its output into a JAR file. IBM includes the collector tool in the product code, along with other tools that help capture the information that you must provide when reporting a problem. The collector tool is part of a strategy of making problem reporting as easy and complete as possible.
There are two phases of using the collector tool. The first phase runs the collector tool on your WebSphere Application Server product and produces a Java archive (JAR) file. The IBM Support team performs the second phase, which is analyzing the Java archive (JAR) file that the collector program produces. The collector program runs to completion as it creates the JAR file, despite any errors that it might find like missing files or invalid commands. The collector tool collects as much data in the JAR file as possible.
The collector tool is a Java application that requires a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to run.
The tool is within the installation root directory for WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment. But you run the tool from a working directory that you create outside of the installation root directory. This procedure describes both of those steps and all of the other steps for using the tool and reporting the results from running the tool.
There are two ways to run the collector tool. Run the collector tool to collect summary data or to traverse the system to gather relevant files and command results. The collector tool produces a Java archive (JAR) file of information needed to determine and solve a problem. The collector summary option produces a lightweight collection of version and other information that is useful when first reporting the problem to IBM Support. Run the collector tool from the root user or from the administrator user to access system files that contain information about kernel settings, installed packages, and other vital data.
The tool collects information about the default profile if you do not use the optional parameter to identify another profile.
The collector program creates the Collector.log log file and an output JAR file in the current directory.
host_name-cell_name-node_name-profile_name.JAR
The Collector.log log file is one of the files collected in the host_name-cell_name-node_name-profile_name.JAR file.