TEP Java Web Start – Basic Diagnostic Capture

by

John Alvord, IBM Corporation

jalvord@us.ibm.com

Draft #1 23 April 2018

Introduction

Tivoli Enterprise Portal [TEP] does not capture any diagnostic information by default. When you are experiencing any issue, basic diagnostic data will be very useful to identify what is actually happening.

Basic TEP Diagnostic Log Capture Instructions

Instructions:

Locate the Java used to start the TEP Java Web Start client. Usually that means the directory that contains the javaws.exe 

program. 

If using Oracle Java the location will be similar this: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre8\bin

If IBM Java the location will be similar this: C:\Program Files (x86)\ibm\Java80\jre\bin

The java location often varies – my latest Oracle Java: C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_171\bin

This document will use the first path from above in this example for simplicity.

Run these steps on the TEP client machine (the machine where you start the TEP to connect to the TEPS).

1) Bring up a command prompt

2) Go to the directory containing javaws.exe (doubles quotes are needed becasue the path because it has a space in it). Your 

directory may differ depending on what version of Java you use:

cd “C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre8\bin”

3) Run this command to clear the cache. The “-uninstall” flag it only clears the cache…it does NOT uninstall java itself

javaws.exe -uninstall

4) Run this command to bring up the Java control panel and turn on tracing/logging. This is always needed because the uninstall in 

step (3) will clear the log and debug flags.

javacpl.exe

and see this

5) Click the Advanced tab and see this – after clicking the tracing and logging flags.

Click apply and ok until the control panel goes away

6) Start the webstart client directly from this same directory – substitute your TEPS server fully qualified name or IP address 

for the string <TEPS_Server>

javaws.exe http://<TEPS_Server>:15200/tep.jnlp

7) Assuming it still fails, collect  TEP client logs from their storage directory. The directory will be in a location similar to this depending on whether you’re using Oracle java or IBM java.

C:\Users\<user_ID>\AppData\LocalLow\IBM\Java\Deployment\log

C:\Users\<user_ID>\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\log

Summary

This shows how to collect basic diagnostics for Tivoli Enterprise Portal [TEP]. Most of the time that is enough to diagnose an issue.  A later revision will show how to set specific traces.

Sitworld: Table of Contents

THANKS!! to Terry Wright trwright@us.ibm.com who shared his notes on this subject. Those notes formed the outline for this post.