Administration Reference

fstrace

Purpose

Introduction to the fstrace command suite

Description

The commands in the fstrace command suite are the interface that system administrators employ to trace Cache Manager operations for debugging purposes. Examples of Cache Manager operations are fetching file data or the status information used to produce output for the UNIX ls command.

The fstrace command interpreter defines an extensive set of Cache Manager operations as the cm event set. When the event set is activated, the Cache Manager writes a message to the cmfx trace log in kernel memory each time it performs one of the defined operations. The log expands only to a defined size (by default, 60 KB), after which it is overwritten in a circular fashion (new trace messages overwrite the oldest ones). If an operation of particular interest occurs, the administrator can afterward display the log on the standard output stream or write it to a file for later study. For more specific procedural instructions, see the IBM AFS Administration Guide.

There are several categories of commands in the fstrace command suite:

Commands to administer or display information about the trace log:
fstrace clear, fstrace lslog, fstrace setlog
Commands to set or display the status of the event set:
fstrace lsset and fstrace setset
A command to display the contents of the trace log: fstrace dump
Commands to obtain help: fstrace apropos and fstrace help

Options

All fstrace commands accept the following optional flag. It is listed in the command descriptions and described in detail here:

-help: Prints a command's online help message on the standard output stream. Do not combine this flag with any of the command's other options; when it is provided, the command interpreter ignores all other options, and only prints the help message.

Privilege Required

To issue most fstrace commands, the issuer must be logged on as the local superuser root on the machine that is generating the trace log.

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