© Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2011. All rights reserved. US Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM® Corp.
The IBM Support Assistant Data Collector Tool provides automatic data collection for IBM products. The tool is pre-configured to locate important diagnostic data on your computer system and copy it into a Collector file. An example of diagnostic data is a log file generated by your IBM product that contains a detailed history of events occurring during product operation. Such a file can be useful in determining the nature and cause of a software problem.Other examples of diagnostic data include initialization files, configuration files, operating system version, disk space, and network connections.The tool can be run in Web UI mode or in a command-line console mode. The console mode provides you with command-line control of the IBM Support Assistant Data Collector collection scripts. The tool includes several features to assist you when you interact with it in console mode, including one that lets you record your responses from a console-mode session in a file and then use the file to drive subsequent executions of the same collection script.
IBM Support Assistant Data Collector Web Interface
To execute a data collection via the web interface a support operating system and browser combination must be used. The browser must also be configured with a Java 1.6 plug-in. It is recommended that the next-generation Java Plug-in from Java 1.6 Update 10 be used. Below is a list of supported operating system and browser combinations.
| OS/browser | Internet Explorer 7 | Internet Explorer 8 | Internet Explorer 9 | Firefox 3.5.8 | Firefox 3.6 or later | Safari | Google Chrome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Windows 7 | N/A | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Server 2008 | N/A | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Vista | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows XP | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WIndows Server 2003 | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AIX 6 | N/A | N/A | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| AIX 7 | N/A | N/A | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| RHEL 5 | N/A | N/A | N/A | No | Yes | N/A | N/A |
| SUSE 10 | N/A | N/A | N/A | No | Yes | N/A | N/A |
| SUSE 11 | N/A | N/A | N/A | No | Yes | N/A | N/A |
| Solaris 10 | N/A | N/A | N/A | No | Yes | N/A | N/A |
IBM Support Assistant Data Collector Console Interface
The console interface may be invoked using Java 1.5 or greater on any of the operating systems listed in the table above.
Tool Installation and Usage
In most cases, the following sequence of steps will get you up and running with the tool. If you run into problems, or if you would like more information on any of these steps, you can refer to the sections below that follow this one.
In all cases, installation of the IBM Support Assistant Data Collector tool is simply a matter of extracting the files from the archived .zip file or .tar.gz file. The files can be extracted to any file system location you choose on the system where you will be running the tool. This will create a subdirectory ISALite under your target directory.
Starting the Tool in Web UI Mode
For Web UI mode, open the index.html file located in the isadc sub-directory.
Command-Line Console Mode - Setting the JAVA_HOME Environment Variable
For command-line mode, you invoke the appropriate launch script from a command line. In the case of a Windows system, these launch scripts are batch files. For the other environments, they are shell scripts. Since the tool is implemented as a Java application, it is necessary that Java can be located before the command-line tool can start. If Java is not available on the PATH, you will have to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable manually. The IBM Support Assistant Data Collector tool requires a JRE at the level 1.5 or higher, so you must first make sure that a suitable JRE is installed on the system where the tool will be running. If it is, then you will need to issue an operating-system-specific command to set the JAVA_HOME variable to point to this JRE. The Microsoft JVM/JDK and gij (GNU libgcj) are not supported.
For example, if on a Windows platform you have jre1.5 installed at c:\jre1.5, you would set JAVA_HOME using the following command:
SET
JAVA_HOME=c:\jre1.5
NOTE: Do not use quotes in the value
of the SET command, even if your value has whitespace characters.
On a Linux, AIX, or Solaris, if you have the JRE installed in /opt/jre15, you would set JAVA_HOME using the following command:
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/jre15
Starting the Tool in Command-Line Console Mode
If running in the Web UI is not an option, the tool should be started in command line mode. Simply execute the launch script from the command line (isadc/isadc.bat or isadc/isadc.sh).
Files are written to the installation directory
By default, the isadc installation directory is used for storing files created during execution. On some systems, the isadc installation directory will be read only. In this instance, use the -useHome parameter (console mode only). This parameter will cause temporary files to be written to the systems temporary directory and persistent files written to the user home directory. NOTE: After extracting the install .zip/.tar.gz file, the user which extracted the file must run a collection before any other user attempts to run a collection using the -useHome parameter. Doing so will ensure proper setup has been done prior to execution by any other non admin/root user.
Interacting with the Tool
Once the IBM Support Assistant Data Collector tool has been started in a web browser, the graphical interface will be displayed. Before the tool can be used to perform data collection and analysis, you must first select a problem type from the main window. With the problem type selected the next step is to press the Start button. As it proceeds, the collection script will ask you for any additional information it needs to complete its collection activities. A script may also ask you for configuration information, for information about the sequence of events leading up to the problem you are dealing with, or for your preferences regarding how it should complete the collection. Once it has all the information it needs, the script will proceed with the remainder of the collection.
When the tool completes the data collection, you can send the results to IBM Support. You can choose between FTP, which is unencrypted and HTTPS, which is encrypted, for the file transfer. The name of the zip file the tool sends to IBM Support will be displayed in the collection status area.
When IBM Support Assistant Data Collector runs in text mode, there are no selection lists or entry fields for user input. Instead, available choices are presented as numbered lists and you enter the number of your selection followed by the Enter key. Input fields are transformed into prompts, at which you enter your response and press Enter. When the data collection is complete, the output is another ZIP file. The output ZIP file can be sent to IBM Support or examined locally.
To stop the collector tool, type the quit option in text mode, or close the browser window.
The tool will prompt for file names. On Unix platforms, using "~" as a designation of the user's HOME directory is not supported. If a "~" is used, a subdirectory under the present working directory by the name of "~" will be referenced.
Determining version information
By default, the version of the tool (and its various sub-components) is printed to the console from which it was launched. When running int the Web UI, version information can also be found using the Help->About menu option. If Java is not available, or the Java application is unable to start, you can also get the version of the tool by running the launch scripts with the "-version" option.
*NOTE: When using the "-version" option, the launch scripts will print out the version information without actually invoking the tool.
Viewing Inventory file
The tool can collect inventory information of the current
system. Inventory information is automatically placed in the
collection ZIP file if available.
The output is an inventory file
(ISALite/inventory/inventory_rcf.xml), that is best viewed with a
web browser.
The following updates, limitations, and problems are known at the time of this release. Additional updates about IBM Support Assistant Data Collector are documented on the IBM Support Assistant Support Web site at: http://www.ibm.com/software/support/isa.
Hardware inventory available with IBM JRE only
When running a collection that attempts to perform software/hardware inventory on a machine, and a non-IBM JRE is used, hardware information may not be returned. This is a limitation of the collection engine, and can be circumvented by using an IBM JRE.
Linux on IBM System z (zLinux)
Data collection on zLinux is only supported in console mode. To start a collection the isadc.sh script should be invoked within a shell.
Java Plug-in configuration
The browser you wish to run the IBM Support Assistant Data Collector in must be configured with a Java 1.6 Plug-in. You may validate that your browser is properly configured by opening the following link http://www.java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp. If you are running the browser on a Linux or Unix platform you may need to manually install and configure the Java Plug-in.
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(c) Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2011. All rights reserved. US Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp.