Trace facilities (enabling and selecting components and logging configuration)

Question 1 - how many log files that one WebSphere Application Server uses?
Question 2 - how many set of trace or error message panels there are on the admin console?
Question 3 - the differences between JVM logs and Process logs?
Question 4 Which logs are the most important or the most frequently used in troubleshooting?

Answer 1 - 7 log files

• Diagnostic Trace (trace.log)
• JVM Logs (SystemOut.log, SystemErr.log)
• Process Logs (native_stdout.log, native_stderr.log)
• IBM Service Logs (activity.log - runtime events and can only be viewed by Log Analyzer)
• NCSA access and HTTP error logging (http_access.log)

Answer 2 - three set of panels and each set has three panels

Troubleshooting

• Logs and trace
• Configuration problems
• Class loader viewer

Configuration Validation

• Configuration error
• Configuration warning
• Configuration information

Diagnostic Provider

• Tests
• State Data
• Configuration Data

Runtime Messages

• Runtime error
• Runtime warning
• Runtime information

 Answer 3 - JVM logs have trace or error messages from the JVM and Process logs contains trace information and error messages from native code (native code is non-Java code, typically found in files with .dll, .exe, and .so extensions).

Answer 4- the JVM log files are the most frequently used in monitoring the server and troubleshooting if not the most important as well.

Here is an IBM Red Paper on tracing and logging - a very good one (some contents, for example, the collector tools are bit old. The current method is us AutoPD, not the collector. However, I am sure many are still using the collector to do MustGather).

Web server has the following logs files as well as the web server plugin.
– Access log: \logs\access.log
– Error log: \logs\error.log