Problem Determination Programmer's Guide
Reprint Courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation, © International Business Machines Corporation
OS/2 Warp 4 consists of various products including OS/2 Warp Version 4, BonusPak, IBM's OS/2 implementation of Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s Java technology, VoiceType for OS/2 Warp, and networking products.
This book provides programmers with guide and reference information for collecting and managing problem determination data using OS/2 Warp Version 4.
This book first provides conceptual and introductory information about OS/2 Warp Version 4 First Failure Support Technology/2 (FFST). This sophisticated and powerful tool requires thoughtful planning and code instrumentation. These topics present planning, setup, and examples that are used for collecting and managing problem determination data.
Separate sections are devoted to understanding the aids that are provided for tracking, collecting, storing, and formatting problem determination data, such as traces, dumps, and error logs.
After reading this book you should understand the benefits of FFST and know how to instrument your code. This allows you to take advantage of the technology and tools that are associated with problem determination data. You should also know how to use the APIs, trace, error logging, and dump functions. These functions retrieve, format, and analyze problem determination data.
This book assumes that you have the IBM Developer's Toolkit for OS/2 Warp Version 4 installed and you are developing application programs. In the chapters of this book refer to the IBM Developers Toolkit simply as the Toolkit.
Links
- pdguide.inf (Sep 1996)
About This Book
FFST is a programming concept that uses a set of software tools and services to capture error information at the time of a code failure. You view the error information using system error log or PM Dump Facility dump formatter to determine the cause of the problem. You capture error information by placing a call to the FFSTProbe API in your code. You instrument your code by calling FFSTProbe and specifying which data to collect.
When your properly instrumented code encounters an unsuspected or unrecoverable error, the code immediately calls the FFSTProbe API to capture failure related information. Your code specifies the parameters to capture data when calling the FFSTProbe function. The system creates an error log entry each time your code calls the FFSTProbe function. The log entry will contain the information your code specifies in the call to FFSTProbe. After the call, the system returns control to your code unless the system triggered a system dump. System dumps automatically restart the system. Additional error information can be collected by using a Probe Control Table (PCT) entry. System dumps are triggered by using PCT entries. The captured information that is contained in the error log entry can include event trace data, program error information, or user-defined data.
Therefore, FFST consists of a collection of functions, commands, and utilities within the Problem Determination Tools folder. Use the utilities to do the following:
- collect problem determination data
- define the types of data collected
- specify where to store the collected error data
- override parameters on calls to the FFSTProbe function.
Summary of Functions and Interfaces, provides an overview of the interfaces to FFST. Problem Determination APIs, provides descriptions of the API functions.
This chapter provides the information you need to instrument your code. It may be helpful to have the OS/2 Warp Version 4 Tools Reference document available for reference while using this book. The associated references are available on the Toolkit CD ROM.
Related Publications
The following publications contain additional information about the OS/2 Warp Version 4 product:
- OS/2 Warp Version 4 CP Reference in the Toolkit
- OS/2 Warp Version 4 Command Reference in the Toolkit
- Trace document in the Serviceability and Diagnostic Aids folder if the folder is installed
- Trace Customizer in the Toolkit
- DMI Programmer's Guide in the Toolkit
- SystemView Agent Client Guide in the Tasks folder