In my previous blog posts regarding the new blog series Troubleshooting HCL Notes, the error messages Unable to Read Rollover Values from View, Invalid Collection Data was Detected, DAOS Prune - Deleted 0 objects and completed with error: (685) Document attachment, The address book does not contain a cross certificate capable of validating the public key is invalid, Server Task Agent Manager on Server is No Longer Responding and HCL Nomad - Server is not reachablewere explained in more detail. We also briefly looked at the Domino Configuration Tuner (DCT), the Domino Domain Monitor (DDM) and the OpenNTF OpenLog application. In the next blog posts more about debugging Agents.
In this blog post we will initially look at the NOTES.INI parameter Debug_AMgr = flag. In every Notes Domino environment frequent use is made of Agents which can cause the necessary problems for Administrators. Agents should therefore not be missing in this new blog series.
Troubleshooting HCL Notes
10. Debugging Agents Using Debug_AMgr
Agents are stand-alone programs that perform a specific task in one or more databases. Agents are the most flexible type of automation. Agents can be run by users in the foreground or run automatically in the background as scheduled agents. Agents are also not associated with a specific design element. Furthermore Agents can be run on a specific server, on several servers, on workstations or the Web. Agents can call other agents. Developers can use simple actions, formulas, LotusScript, or Java programs in Agents. Next Agents can be distributed easily because they can be replicated. Finally Agent can be shared or private. A shared agent is created by one user and can be run by other users.
A private agent (sometimes called a personal agent) is usually created and run by the same user. In Notes the private agent is not available on the Actions menu. In Domino Designer anyone with Designer level access or higher can see and run a private agent.
The Agent Manager supports all aspects of running and troubleshooting agents. The Agent Manager checks security, manages agent scheduling, monitors events and starts the appropriate agents when their associated events occur, records information in a log (the Agent Log) and performs database operations to run the automated tasks associated with the agent. Although Administrators don't work directly with the Agent Manager they use the AMGR components for troubleshooting an agent.
First we will look at the NOTES.INI parameter Debug_AMgr = flag for debugging Agents. In case an Administrator discovers that one or more agents are causing problems the first thing an Administrator can do is to modify the NOTES.INI file and turn on the Agent Manager Debugging on the Domino server. To enable the debugging an Administrator can simply add the following line to the servers NOTES.INI file, Debug_AMgr = flag
The flag for the setting can be one or more of the following:
| Command | Result |
|---|---|
| c | To output agent control parameters |
| e | To output information about Agent Manager events |
| l | To output loading reports |
| m | To output agent memory warnings |
| p | To output agent performance statistics |
| r | To output agent execution reports |
| s | To output information about AMGR scheduling |
| v | Verbose mode, outputs more messages regarding agent loading, scheduling and queues |
| * | To output all of the information in the parameters |
Administrators can also enable the Agent Manager debugging using the console command Tell amgr debug * from server console. This will enable all AMGR debug options. To turn off the Agent Manager debugging Administrators can use the console command Tell amgr debug.
> tell amgr debug *
16-10-2020 11:17:05 AMgr: Current debug control setting is 'mecvrspl'
The output appears in the console log and the Notes Log (log.nsf).
16-10-2020 11:16:50 AMgr: Agent 'Automatically Update Documents' in 'mail\nameuser.nsf' will run on behalf of 'NAMEUSER'
16-10-2020 11:17:49 AMgr: Agent 'Automatically Update Documents' in 'mail\nameuser.nsf'ran successfully; elapsed time was '1' ticks
16-10-2020 11:17:49 AMgr: Agent 'Automatically Update Documents' is scheduled to run next at: 16-10-2020 11:21:49
I my own situation I usually run debugging Agents with the setting Debug_Amgr=*
Be aware that having all debugging flags turned on has approximately 5% performance cost on the average user response time.
In the next blog posts more about debugging Agents using NOTES.INI settings and console commands.