required support programs

making sure required support programs are available

The ServerDoc tool uses programs already installed on the system, such as pstack on Solaris, dbx on AIX, and gdb on Linux and HP-UX. If such tools are not installed, or the PATH environment variable does not include the directory where they are located, then ServerDoc will fail.

ServerDoc provides a way to check the system and verify that required tools are present:

# java -jar /path/to/ServerDoc.jar CheckPlatform

a sample run

gdb was not found in this example on HP-UX:

# /opt/VRTSob/jre/bin/java -jar /tmp/ServerDoc.jar  CheckPlatform
The gdb program is required but missing.
gdb can be obtained from the HP web site.

The lsof program is helpful but missing.

If the program is already installed, adjust PATH
to include the directory where it resides.

Messages for tool availability are sometimes system-specific, so the advice for checking the HP web site in the example above would not be appropriate except for HP-UX users.

Any tool listed as "required but missing" needs to be installed in order to analyze web server hangs or child process crashes. Other tools are not absolutely required.