IBM AIX Continuous Availability Features - IBM Redbooks

► Asynchronously
The following sequence of commands runs an asynchronous trace on the program
myprog and ends the trace:
trace -a -j30D,30E
myprog
trcstop
► You can format the trace file with the following command:
trcrpt -o output.file
Additional details about these trace options are available in IBM AIX Version 6.1 Differences
Guide, SC27-7559.
POSIX trace
AIX Version 6 implements the POSIX trace system, which supports tracing of user
applications via a standardized set of interfaces. The POSIX tracing facilities allow a process
to select a set of trace event types, activate a trace stream of the selected trace events as
they occur in the flow of execution, and retrieve the recorded trace events. Like system trace,
POSIX trace is also dependent upon precompiled-in trace hooks in the application being
instrumented.
Additional details about these trace options are available in IBM AIX Version 6.1 Differences
Guide, SC27-7559.
Iptrace
The iptrace daemon provides interface-level packet tracing for Internet protocols. This
daemon records Internet packets received from configured interfaces. Command flags
provide a filter so that the daemon traces only packets that meet specific criteria. Packets are
traced only between the local host on which the iptrace daemon is invoked and the remote
host.
If the iptrace process was started from a command line without the System Resource
Controller (SRC), it must be stopped with the kill -15 command. The kernel extension
loaded by the iptrace daemon remains active in memory if iptrace is stopped any other way.
The LogFile parameter specifies the name of a file to which the results of the iptrace
command are sent. To format this file, run the ipreport command.
The ipreport command may display the message TRACING DROPPED xxxx PACKETS. This
count of dropped packets indicates only the number of packets that the iptrace command
was unable to grab because of a large packet whose size exceeded the socket-receive buffer
size. The message does not mean that the packets are being dropped by the system.
2.3.9 Component Trace facility
The Component Trace (CT) facility allows the capture of information about a specific kernel
component, kernel extension, or device driver. Component Trace is an important FFDC and
SFDC tool available to the kernel, kernel extensions, and device drivers. The CT facility
allows a component to capture trace events to aid in both debugging and system analysis,
and provide focused trace data on larger server systems.
CT provides system trace information for specific system components. This information
allows service personnel to access component state information through either in-memory
trace buffers or through traditional AIX system trace. Component Trace is enabled by default.
Chapter 2. AIX continuous availability features 29