13.15 Tracing

Trace files are written to the USSERVER directory with the name ustask<task number>.trc.  The task number is the task number written to the usserver.log file on each logged line.  The trace will use the TRCSIZE environment variable to determine the maximum size of a trace file in memory.  The size on disk will be larger.  When it exceeds the size specified, it will reuse memory so not to exceed the specified TRCSIZE.

When tracing is activated, a new task is created to service the trace request.  You will see it in the Director console.  You can monitor how tracing is doing through this screen (whether it wraps for example, and how much memory is allocated).  Tracing is entirely in memory until the trace is stopped at which time the trace task writes the trace information in memory to the trace file (as named above).  This results is very high speed tracing without loss of important data.  However, since the trace is in memory, it is important to not specify a TRCSIZE which is too large as it could cause a resource shortage in the machine.

To enable tracing (under direction of UPSTREAM technical support), you can:

• Enable tracing in the Miscellaneous option in the Reservoir configurator (usservercfg).  This will cause ALL tasks to trace.  This should only be set for a short time as it can produce a very large number of very large files.  This is the recommended method if a number of tasks need to be traced or if the task starts and stops to fast to enable it in the Reservoir console.
• Turn on or off tracing for an individual task in the Reservoir console.  This is the recommended method, if you have time to do it.
• Set the USSERVER.CFG parameter USHOSTTRACE=Y (same as the first option but done manually).
• Create a file in the Backups/<Backup Profile> directory, with the name Trace.<hex request value>.  This will enable UPSTREAM to trace only for a specific backup profile and only a specific request type.