How to toggle tracer group?

[Jon Seele]

We have an agent that is deployed using the out-of-the-box weblogic-typical.pbl with dynamic probe building enabled. The weblogic-typical.pbl has toggles-typical.pbd in it which has the following tracer group turned off:

#######################
# Threads Configuration
# ================

# TurnOn: ThreadTracing

Our agent installation is shared across hundreds of agents but we have a need to turn on ThreadTracing for a single agent. I know we can change the toggles-typical.pbd file and uncomment the above line to enable it but that would enable it for all of our agents.

My question is... what is the best way to turn on this tracer group for the single agent?

For example, can it be turned on for the single agent by changing it's agent profile to include a custom PBD turning the tracer group on? I thing I don't know is if the TurnOn for a tracer group has to preceed the actual tracer group definition or if it can be after as I have it below:

introscope.autoprobe.directivesFile=weblogic-typical.pbl,hotdeploy,toggle-thread-on.pbd

where toggle-thread-on.pbd:

TurnOn: ThreadTracing

Any help/suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Jon

[Haruhiko Davis]

Jon,
You're right about needing a separate profile for that agent. You'll also need to create a PBL to contain your list of PBDs. You might as well place that custom PBD in the list and not worry about adding it to the profile.

-Hiko

[Jon Seele]

Thanks Hiko.

I already had a separate agent profile. I was finally able to experiment and adding a PBD with the TurnOn worked but only after a recycle of the application server.

Jon

[Legacy User]

Jon,

Updates to the [font=Courier New]introscope.autoprobe.directivesFile[font] property do require a restart of the agent. However, if you use a custom (or existing) PBL file and add your new PBD to it, the changes don't require a restart of the agent (if you have dynamic instrumentation enabled). Additionally, with dynamic instrumentation, you can place a PBD in the hotdeploy directory and it will get automatically loaded and applied. You can have multiple hotdeploy directories, which enables you to have a specific hotdeploy directory for a specific agent profile as well as a general hotdeploy directory that is shared by all agents. In other words, you have the following four options (including what you've done):

Option 1:
* Set the following property in the [font=Courier New]IntroscopeAgent.profile[font]:

introscope.autoprobe.directivesFile=weblogic-typical.pbl,hotdeploy,toggle-thread-on.pbd

* Restart the agent

Option 2:
* Create a new PBL file: [font=Courier New]custom-toggles.pbl[font]
* Add the following PBD to the contents of the new PBL: [font=Courier New]toggle-thread-on.pbd[font]
* Set the following property in the [font=Courier New]IntroscopeAgent.profile[font]:

introscope.autoprobe.directivesFile=weblogic-typical.pbl,custom-toggles.pbl,hotdeploy

* Restart the agent (with dynamic instrumentation, future changes to [font=Courier New]custom-toggles.pbl[font] will not require a restart)

Option 3:
* Create a new directory: [font=Courier New]hotdeploy_agent1[font]
* Add the following PBD to the contents of the new directory:[font=Courier New] toggle-thread-on.pbd[font]
* Set the following property in the [font=Courier New]IntroscopeAgent.profile[font]:

introscope.autoprobe.directivesFile=weblogic-typical.pbl,hotdeploy,hotdeploy_agent1

* Restart the agent (after the first restart and with dynamic instrumentation, new files and changes to files in the [font=Courier New]hotdeploy_agent1[font] directory will not require additional restarts)

Option 4:
* Add the following PBD to the contents of the [font=Courier New]weblogic-typical.pbl[font] PBL:[font=Courier New] toggle-thread-on.pbd[font] (with dynamic instrumentation, a restart is not required)

[Jon Seele]

Ah... that explains it.

Thanks for the great information!

Jon

[Haruhiko Davis]

Please mark your answered as 'resolved' when your question has been answered.