ASHLOG

Updated December 2019

A-Shell maintains a log of significant events in the file ashlog.log, which can be an invaluable aid in monitoring a system and tracking down problems after they occur. By default it is found in the directory where the miame.ini is located, but the optional LOGDIR directory in miame.ini can be used to put it somewhere else. The log automatically resets and archives several prior copies of itself (using ashlog.001, ashlog.002, up to ashlog.005) when it reaches approximately 10 MB. The log will contain any critical or unusual error messages, plus any of a wide variety of information messages that can be configured using system trace options, which may be set by any of the following methods:

• TRACE statement(s) in miame.ini. It is recommend that all A-Shell installations have TRACE=BASERR,SIGHUP,INOUT as a minimum.

• TRACE options in SET.LIT (SET TRACE xxxxx ON/OFF)

• MX_GETTRACE and MX_SETTRACE

Applications can also output directly to the ashlog.log file using MX_ASHLOG.

Comments

All trace messages start with a date/time stamp, followed by [ppppp-jjj]<xxxxx:yyyyy:zzz> where ppppp is either the server process ID or the Windows client machine id, jjj is the job #, xxxxx is the program or command file being executed, yyyyy is the current SBX routine (if applicable), and zzz is the location counter within the program or SBX. In the case of Windows, the client machine id may have a :## suffix indicating the instance ## of A-Shell on that machine—i.e. to distinguish multiple client instances launched on the same machine. Note that the first few traces will show a job # of 0 since they occur before the job number is assigned.

Many other messages may appear indicating either errors, warnings, or debugging details activated by one of the other TRACE options. Some of those can be quite verbose, but you can enable and disable them temporarily from the dot prompt using the TRACE options in SET.LIT command.

Reviewing the log periodically is a good way of identifying issues that can be addressed before they become more serious.