Tracing CMS Mood!!

CMS (Central Management Server) sometimes shows that it is up in CCM (Central Configuration Management) but in CMC (Central Management Console) it shows that it is down. Not necessarily a consistent behaviour.

Fig 01 – CMS Legend

As one would normally do, I re-started the CMS in CMC and thought I was done. It worked well for a day or two, but I found that it was down again in CMC while it was showing as up in CCM on the BusinessObjects Production server. I repeated the same process and after few days, this problem occurred again.

So to resolve this, I had to turn on the trace. I will not be going in details of what the errors were and how I fixed them. My intention is to write about on how to turn on the trace which is a great feature and will help in solving many apparently unsolvable problems. So to turn on the CMS trace and capture the logs. I am presenting 2 ways for 2 different versions BO XI R2 and BO XI 3.0 and up.

BO XI R2: Append –trace in CMS command properties

Steps:

1 Stop CMS

2 Append –trace at the end of the string in Command in Properties tab

Fig 02 - Appending Trace in CMS Properties

3 Restart the CMS

4 Now go to the location: Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 11.5\Logging

and check the logs in the Logging folder.

Fig 03 – CMS logs in Logging Folder

BO XI 3.0 and Above: This option is applicable to the BO XI 3.0. Enabling trace through BO_trace.ini (This option is mostly usefulfor optimization or debugging purposes.)

Steps:


1 Stop the CMS

2 Locate file BO_trace.ini at this location C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects

Enterprise 12.0\Logging\logConfig

Note: A sample BO_trace.ini file can be found in the following locations after installing a build:


C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\Logging\logConfig\BO_trace.ini

To turn on tracing using the BO_trace.ini file, the "active" setting within the file must be set to "true" (i.e. active=true). And append -traceinipath to any server command line

Note: By default all the log files will be placed in \BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\logging folder

I hope this will be helpful to somebody.