Aix Error Logging
Contents |
High Availability LPAR Networks Performance Security Systems Management Tivoli Virtualization Workload Management Cloud Computing IBM Announcements IBM Research Linux Open Source What's New Automotive Healthcare Manufacturing Miscellaneous Non-Profit Retail Application Development Migration Miscellaneous Systems Management Disk Flash Servers Software error logging command Tape AIX > Administrator > Systems Management Reviewing AIX Error and Boot Logs July
Aix System Error Log
2013 | by David Tansley Print AIX provides comprehensive logging of events—some are errors requiring attention and others are just notifications. For how to check error logs in aix system administrators, tasked to make sure the system is running without major issues, logging provides alerts or apprises them of events as they happen. AIX offers different logs depending on the action and when it occurred. These
Aix Log Io Error
logs hold information on the boot-up process, console, hardware and system software events. It’s up to the system admin to take action on these events, because once AIX has published the log, its job is done. Logs, Logs, Logs AIX not only offers the errpt but also other error reporting logs. Using the alog command one can list and pick a log to view: # alog -L boot bosinst nim console cfg mdmplog unix error log lvmt lvmcfg dumpsymp When issues arise during the boot-up process, for example, and you’re not at the console, you can review the start-up process messages, particularly the boot and console messages. To list the available logs: alog -o -t For example, to view the console log: alog -o -t console Logging Your Own Entries The standard errpt list hardware or software events in AIX that have occurred. However, you might want a message generated and inserted into errpt after some user interaction, for instance, if a system admin has made a change. This allows the change notification to be visible via errpt. Like the logger command that writes to the system log (messages file), errlogger will write an operator notification entry to the error log. For example, having completed an AIX upgrade, you could post that to the error log, so other users could view it, like so: errlogger "AIX upgrade completed - no errors- test" Working With errpt The first thing AIX admins should do is get event notifications via email. Those errors/warnings will be emailed as well as posted to the errpt log. First, create an email alias containing all system admins’ addresses in the /etc/mail/aliases file. Insert the email alias into the notification list, using the following smit selections: smit diag, current shell diagn
errreporter script. Download the sample errreporter.conf configuration file. The AIX Error Logging Facility Sandor W. Sklar The primary goal of every UNIX systems administrator is to ensure that the systems that they are responsible for are functioning http://web.stanford.edu/~ssklar/errreporter/article.html smoothly and with the best performance possible, 100% of the time. File systems running out of space, applications dumping core, and Ethernet adapter failures are just a sample of the types of things that can trip up a system, impacting that goal. Therefore, it is critical that the people responsible for a system are aware of anything that might have an impact on attaining that 100% system availability. One of the things error log that makes AIX my favorite flavor of UNIX is that, besides all the standard tools, daemons, and configuration files that are present in all flavors of UNIX, IBM has provided a number of enhancements that make the monitoring, reliability, and administration of RS/6000 systems second to none. This article will focus on one of those tools: the error logging facility. I'll show you how the AIX error logging facility works, then I'll present aix error logging a program I wrote that checks the log for error messages, filters out any error messages you wish to ignore, and sends an email to the systems administrator. The Error Logging Subsystem On most UNIX systems, information and errors from system events and processes are managed by the syslog daemon (syslogd); depending on settings in the configuration file /etc/syslog.conf, messages are passed from the operating system, daemons, and applications to the console, to log files, or to nowhere at all. AIX includes the syslog daemon, and it is used in the same way that other UNIX-based operating systems use it. In addition to syslog, though, AIX also contains another facility for the management of hardware, operating system, and application messages and errors. This facility, while simple in its operation, provides unique and valuable insight into the health and happiness of an RS/6000 system. The AIX error logging facility components are part of the bos.rte and the bos.sysmgt.serv_aid packages, both of which are automatically placed on the system as part of the base operating system installation. Some of these components are shown in Table 1. Unlike the syslog daemon, which performs no logging at all in its default configuration as shipped, the error logging facility requires no configuration before it can provide useful information about t