APLMGR SCF Reference Manual

OSI/FTAM and OSI/APLMGR SCF Reference Manual—421943-001

5-1

PTrace Reference for Tandem FTAM

This section provides information on the use of the PTrace utility to display information

from the traces of APLMGR, initiator, and responder processes. PTrace formats the data

that is stored in the unstructured trace files that you can create using the SCF TRACE

command. These files contain records of the communications between processes. For

information on troubleshooting problems using PTrace and for more extensive PTrace

examples, see the OSI/FTAM Configuration and Management Manual.

This manual covers only subsystem-specific information on PTrace commands and

displays. For general information on PTrace—including instructions for starting and

stopping PTrace, general information on PTrace commands, and descriptions of PTrace

error messages—see the PTrace Reference Manual.

TRACE and PTrace

The SCF TRACE PROCESS command and the PTrace utility, used together, help you

diagnose different problems that can occur in the operation of APLMGR, initiator, and

responder processes. These problems can arise as a result of problems between the

Tandem system and other systems due to incompatibilities in FTAM implementations,

incompatible implementations of underlying OSI layers, incorrect configuration

parameters, application program faults, FTAM software faults, and so on. In addition to

the Tandem FTAM TRACE and PTrace capabilities, it may be necessary to trace the

activities of the underlying layers to solve some problems.

The TRACE command allows you to monitor the activities of the APLMGR, initiator,

and responder processes involved in the FTAM environment, including the user

application. You can initiate and terminate the gathering of trace information while these

processes are running. You can select different types of process activity to trace using

the SELECT keyword of the TRACE command. For more information on the TRACE

command, see TRACE PROCESS

on page 3-116.

You can use PTrace to format and display trace records captured by the TRACE

command. To examine the trace file, you can choose among a number of PTrace

SELECT options to display only specified types of trace records.