Launching a Black Box in standalone mode

Launch the Black Box in either of the following ways:

From the Windows Start Menu:

From the Start Menu, select All Programs => BMC Software => AppSight Black Box. The Black Box is launched and appears minimized in the System Tray.

From the Command Line:

Locate the Black Box at:

C:\Program Files\BMC Software\BMC AppSight\AppSight for Windows\Bin

Use the following syntax to determine the Black Box's Recording Profile:

[/rpr <rpr file>]

Set the Black Box to save the recordings into an ASL file, using the following syntax:

[/asl <asl file>]

Add optional parameters:

Invisible - displays no output and hides the Black Box icon. Use the following syntax:

[/invisible]

Examples of the launch command:

• C:\Program Files\BMC Software\AppSight\Bin\BlackBox.exe
• blackbox /rpr "C:\My Dir \ MySys.rpr" /asl "c:\logs\ MySys.asl"

To launch a Black Box Service from the command line:

Use the SC command:

SC START bbxservice [/rpr "file.rpr"] [/asl "file.asl"]

Note that Windows environment variables can be passed in the /asl parameter. The example below inserts the computer name and a random number to the asl file:

SC START bbxservice /rpr "c:\mydir\myrpr.rpr" /asl "c:\logs\mylog.%computername%.%random%.asl"

To stop a Black Box Service from the command line:

Use the SC command:

net stop bbxservice [/rpr "file.rpr"] [/asl "file.asl"]

Error Messages

Launching a Black Box in standalone mode from the command line with an erroneous input path (containing wrong or mistyped directory or drive), will display an "Invalid log path" error message and "log will be saved to default folder" is stated.