/logging: Some notes about srvrmgr usage

The command line program srvrmgr is not that popular in Siebel, but any reasonably seasoned sadmin will soon discover how useful it is considering the GUI limitations.

One of the most obvious reasons to use is when the AOM is out-of-service for any reason and you don't have a Siebel Client Dedicated configured. Other usage is for tasks automation.

This posts is about some tips that I found here and there about using srvrmgr.

Note: this post was updated at October 6, 2015 to include additional content.

Hide your password

Let's consider for a moment the password usage with the program: you may have notice that doesn't matter if you use the "-p" option or not, the password is always echoed to the standard output!

There are different forms to solve this, but the better one is to disable the echo when typing the password. Several programming languages may help you in this. With Perl, for example, this is very straightforward in a Microsoft Windows environment:

use Term::ReadKey qw(ReadMode);
use Win32::Process;

my $server     = '';
my $gateway    = '';
my $enterprise = '';
my $user       = '';
my $srvrmgr    = 'sea752\\client\\BIN\\srvrmgr.exe';

system('chcp 1252');

print 'Type your password to connect to Siebel Server: ';
ReadMode(2);
my $password = ;
ReadMode(0);

chomp($password);

print "\n\n";

my $process;

Win32::Process::Create( $process, $srvrmgr,
    "srvrmgr /e $enterprise /g $gateway /u $user /p $password",
    0, NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, '.' )
  or die errorReport();

$process->Wait(10);

sub errorReport {

    print Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );

}

Of course, any modern programming language will help you with that.

If you have a MS Windows environment and is particularly interested in better hiding the password, take a look at the Server Manager 2 program that is part of the Siebel GNU Tools project.

Configuring the output

Character encoding

First, let's talk about configuring character encoding. Let's suppose that your system is configured in PTB and you run a simple list comp command in the srvrmgr prompt:

srvrmgr> list comp

CC_ALIAS           CC_NAME                               CG_ALIAS      CC_RUNMODE   CP_DISP_RUN_STATE
-----------------  ------------------------------------  ------------  -----------  -----------------
ClientAdmin        Client Administration                 System        Background   Ativado
CommConfigMgr      Communications Configuration Manager  CommMgmt      Batch        Ativado
CommOutboundMgr    Communications Outbound Manager       CommMgmt      Batch        Ativado
CommSessionMgr     Communications Session Manager        CommMgmt      Batch        Ativado
DbXtract           Database Extract                      Remote        Batch        Ativado
EAIObjMgr_enu      EAI Object Manager (ENU)              EAI           Interactive  Ativado
MailMgr            Email Manager                         CommMgmt      Background   Ativado
EIM                Enterprise Integration Mgr            EAI           Batch        Ativado
FSMSrvr            File System Manager                   System        Batch        Ativado
GenNewDb           Generate New Database                 Remote        Batch        Ativado
GenTrig            Generate Triggers                     Workflow      Batch        Ativado
PageMgr            Page Manager                          CommMgmt      Background   Ativado
PDbXtract          Parallel Database Extract             Remote        Batch        Em execuÃ¾Ã’o
RepAgent           Replication Agent                     Remote        Background   Ativado
ServerMgr          Server Manager                        System        Interactive  Em execuÃ¾Ã’o
SRBroker           Server Request Broker                 System        Interactive  Em execuÃ¾Ã’o
SRProc             Server Request Processor              System        Interactive  Em execuÃ¾Ã’o
SynchMgr           Synchronization Manager               Remote        Interactive  Ativado
TxnMerge           Transaction Merger                    Remote        Background   Em execuÃ¾Ã’o
TxnProc            Transaction Processor                 Remote        Background   Em execuÃ¾Ã’o
TxnRoute           Transaction Router                    Remote        Background   Em execuÃ¾Ã’o
UpgKitBldr         Upgrade Kit Builder                   SiebAnywhere  Batch        Ativado
WorkActn           Workflow Action Agent                 Workflow      Background   Ativado
WorkMon            Workflow Monitor Agent                Workflow      Background   Ativado
WfProcBatchMgr     Workflow Process Batch Manager        Workflow      Batch        Ativado
WfProcMgr          Workflow Process Manager              Workflow      Batch        Ativado
ePharmaObjMgr_enu  ePharma Object Manager (ENU)          LifeSciences  Interactive  Ativado
ePharmaObjMgr_esn  ePharma Object Manager (ESN)          LifeSciences  Interactive  Ativado
ePharmaObjMgr_ptb  ePharma Object Manager (PTB)          LifeSciences  Interactive  Ativado

Pretty standard output, except by the weird characters. Output from srvrmgr is usually Unicode (UTF-8) but your OS terminal must be set to use it.

If your are in a Microsoft Windows environment, you will have to change your current code page. Your default configuration may vary, but to get all the characters corrected printed (assuming the output is in UTF-8) you will need to set it to 65001:

I:\> chcp 65001
Active code page: 65001

That will do. In Linux, most probably your terminal is already configured to UTF-8. If not, you may want to take a look at exporting the LC_ALL variable to your language. For Brazilian Portuguese, that would be the desired value:

export LC_ALL=pt_BR.UTF-8

That may vary depending in your Linux distribution. If you are on UNIX, you may need to consult the OS documentation for that.

It is also good to remember that the spool command may also follow your database encoding. At least when I used databases in UTF-8, the output of srvrmgr followed the same.

Manipulating the commands output

It is possible to change the way that srvrmgr will show the output from commands. For example, the default output of list comp is this:

srvrmgr> list comp
SV_NAME     CC_ALIAS                       CC_NAME                                   CT_ALIAS  CG_ALIAS      CC_RUNMODE   CP_DISP_RUN_STATE  CP_NUM_RUN_  CP_MAX_TASK  CP_ACTV_MTS  CP_MAX_MTS_ CP_START_TIME        CP_END_TIME  CP_STATUS  CC_INCARN_NO  CC_DESC_TEXT
----------  -----------------------------  ----------------------------------------  --------  ------------  -----------  -----------------  -----------  -----------  -----------  -----------  -------------------  -----------  ---------  ------------  ------------
siebsrvdev  BusIntBatchMgr                 Business Integration Batch Manager                  EAI           Batch        Online             0            20           1            1            2012-03-01 14:59:11
siebsrvdev  BusIntMgr                      Business Integration Manager                        EAI           Batch        Online             0            20           1            1            2012-03-01 14:59:11
siebsrvdev  ClientAdmin                    Client Administration                               System        Background   Online             0            1                                      2012-03-01 14:59:11

The output is a bit difficult to read and I did it intentionally: this is exactly how the data is displayed in my terminal. If you use this frequently, it may be a pain.

This can be changed with the command configure list. Let's see it's on line help:

srvrmgr> help configure list
  configure list  
       [show  [ AS ]]
       [,     [ AS ]] ....

The command allows you to configure the columns that will be shown, the size of it and even creating a different alias for them.

You can also check the current configuration of list comp:

srvrmgr> configure list comp
    SV_NAME (31):  Server name
    CC_ALIAS (31):  Component alias
    CC_NAME (76):  Component name
    CT_ALIAS (31):  Component type alias
    CG_ALIAS (31):  Component GRoup Alias
    CC_RUNMODE (31):  Component run mode (enum)
    CP_DISP_RUN_STATE (61):  Component display run state
    CP_NUM_RUN_TASKS (11):  Current number of running tasks
    CP_MAX_TASKS (11):  Maximum tasks configured
    CP_ACTV_MTS_PROCS (11):  Active MTS control processes
    CP_MAX_MTS_PROCS (11):  Maximum MTS control processes
    CP_START_TIME (21):  Component start time
    CP_END_TIME (21):  Component end time
    CP_STATUS (251):  Component-reported status
    CC_INCARN_NO (23):  Incarnation Number
    CC_DESC_TEXT (251):  Component description

With the show option you be able to see which columns you want and in the desired sequence:

srvrmgr> configure list comp show SV_NAME(31),CC_ALIAS(21),CC_NAME(76)
srvrmgr> configure list comp
        SV_NAME (31):  Server name
        CC_ALIAS (21):  Component alias
        CC_NAME (76):  Component name
srvrmgr> list comp
SV_NAME     CC_ALIAS              CC_NAME
----------  --------------------  ----------------------------------------
siebsrvdev  BusIntBatchMgr        Business Integration Batch Manager
siebsrvdev  BusIntMgr             Business Integration Manager
siebsrvdev  ClientAdmin           Client Administration
siebsrvdev  CommConfigMgr         Communications Configuration Manager
siebsrvdev  CommInboundMgr        Communications Inbound Manager
...
siebsrvdev  eSitesClinicalObjMgr  eSitesClinical Object Manager (PTB)
52 rows returned.

Now it is easier on the eyes! But what if you need all the columns to be displayed?

There is a trick for that and as far as I know, it's undocumented. I present you the set command. With it you can change or (show current) configuration. Let's see the options available:

The parameter we want here is ColumnWidth. If you enable it will be possible to define the width of the columns output using the configure list command:

srvrmgr> set ColumnWidth true
srvrmgr> set
username            sadmin*
service             (null)
enterprise          (null)
app server          (null)
compression         FALSE*
encryption          FALSE*
protocol            TCP/IP*
port                (null)*
cluster             (null)*
name server         (null)*
log filter          (null)
verbose             FALSE
batch               FALSE
header              TRUE
footer              TRUE
ColumnWidth         1
delimiter

All done! If you paid attention, you saw that the configure list command uses the column name followed by a parenthesis with a integer between: this is the width in characters of the column. With the command below you can change the columns width to have longer (or narrower) output. Beware that you may truncate the output or even the columns names if the width is not larger enough:

srvrmgr> configure list comp show
SV_NAME(31),CC_ALIAS(21),CC_NAME(76),CT_ALIAS(31),CG_ALIAS(31),CC_RUNMODE(31),CP_DISP_RUN_STATE(61),CP_NUM_RUN_TASKS(16),CP_MAX_TASKS(12),CP_ACTV_MTS_PROCS(17),CP_MAX_MTS_PROCS(16),CP_START_TIME(21),CP_END_TIME(21),CP_STATUS(251),CC_INCARN_NO(23),CC_DESC_TEXT(251)

Time saving tips

Avoid some typing

After configuring your optimal output, you may wonder that is a bit boring to repeat this every time. That's right, it would be boring.

Here are some commands to save your time and patience:

alias
save preferences
load preferences
read

alias is for creating aliases for your commands. You type:

alias [name] [command]

And that's it.

save and load preferences will keep your current environment configuration to a text file and load those preferences, respectively. The default location for this file will always be the bin directory where the srvrmgr program is available and the name of the file will always be ".Siebel_svrmgr.pref".

Beware that any set you used won't be save to the preferences file. Of course, being a text file is just a matter to open it and repeat the commands there.

Then you may be in trouble if the srvrmgr is shared between different users. You may want to have your own copy of preferences. That's where read commands helps:

read c:\temp\create_custom_compdefs.txt

Use the wild card

You can filter further the output from any command by using the wild card "%" (without the parenthesis) for some of the values that are part of the output. Depending on the command, this is be applicable to different columns but not all of them. For example, if you want to list components that have the alias starting with "wf":

list comp wf%

The wild card only matches what starts or ends with the given pattern. You cannot use both at the same time.

Configure and use Server Group feature

Since Siebel version 8 you can use the feature of Server Group with srvrmgr. This feature allow you to create... servers groups. This will allow you to connect to a defined group and send a single command to all of them at once. When you want to connect to the server group, include the /z command line option to the server, followed by the server group name you had defined previously.

To create a server group, use the command below to each one of the server that you want to be part of the group:

  
change attribute groupname=[server group name] for server [siebel server name]

This example is assuming that you had connected to the Enterprise instead of specifying the Siebel server name.
To remove a Siebel Server from a Server Group use:

change attribute groupname=" " for server [siebel server name]

For any reason that escapes my imagination, it is necessary to have a space between the double quotes.

Performance tips

And here are some tips related to performance when using srvrmgr:

srvrmgr program instantiates new processes of Server Manager component, which is not a multi-thread component, that means that each connection creates a new process, which is a expensive task for any OS.
use the "/s" options whenever possible to retrieve data: instead of connecting to the enterprise and submitting a command to all servers, connect individually to each server and retrieve the data you want: this will avoid serializing the output and creating additional processes in the other servers instead of a single one.
if you have a lot of commands to send to the Server Manager component, don't use several srvrmgr executions with the "/c" option. Instead, write all the commands to a text file (one command per line) and use the "/i". This will use a single connection to run all the commands. You most probably will want to the check the "/o" and "/b" options too.

Batch mode tips

srvrmgr can also work in batch mode. That means you can connect only once and get out only after all the commands were executed. There are several situations when this feature is interesting. One is executing a large amount of commands that you might need to repeat several times. Another is executing some commands in a scheduled task. These are some tips for batch mode:

use the /b option whenever possible. This options will required that all commands executed before the current command were executed successfully. Any command that raised an error will cause the program to abort execution. This will help you to generate more errors or putting the system into a invalid state.
use the sleep command to put a time between a command and other. Useful if you starting a server or are submitting a lot of new tasks.
specify a value for the parameter TaskTag when starting a new task. This text will appear in the list tasks command if you include the TK_TASKTAG column with the configure output command or the show parameter.
you can omit the header when connecting with the Siebel Server by using the -q command line option of srvrmgr (also undocumented).

Caveats

There are some caveats using srvrmgr. I'll give some workarounds when possible.

Your settings with output width is not working

If you are fetching information from several servers, you will notice that the output may be larger than the width you set. This seems to happen when one of the servers have larger output for a column than the other servers. If you get output from a single servers you will be able to control that.

Another possibility is to set the delimiter variable to a single character to use as delimiter. Once you do this you will be able to fetch correctly the values from one column to another. In fact, you can totally ignore column width output unless some columns are having their name truncated due being larger than their respective output (for example, columns with Boolean values).

To set the delimiter, you can use the set delimiter command inside the srvrmgr prompt or use the command line option -k for it. Both expects as parameter a single character to be used as the delimiter.

Advanced parameters output configuration is not working

When setting list parameters output, all works. For any reason, the same is not applied to the list advanced parameters command.

You can't set the output of list advance parameters directly with configure. Also, you can't rely on the list parameters to get the same formated output.

This looks like a bug that I saw only with Siebel 8.1. So far, the workaround is not setting the list parameters output anyhow before running list advanced parameters: if you do it, the respective columns that shows when the parameters starts to take effect will be truncated.

set command is not saved to preferences files

If you need to keep set commands to the preferences files, know that save preferences will not help you. Instead, go there and write the command manually. The load preferences will do the expected thing.

The non-documented commands

Despite the fact that you can always use the on-line help command, there are some commands that are not documented there.

list advanced parameters

To see advanced parameters for any one of the available items of list parameters command.

list hidden parameters

To see hidden parameters for for any one of the available items of list parameters command.

List threads id's

When analyzing Siebel component crashes, having the associated threads id's will help you identifying the root cause of the errors.

srvrmgr> list tasks show CC_ALIAS, TK_TASKID, TK_TID, TK_PID

This will generate a list of tasks and include the component alias (CC_ALIAS), the task id (TK_TASKID), the OS thread id (TK_TID), and OS process id (TK_PID).

Note the TK_TID and TK_PID values for the appropriate task id that you have flushed the FDR buffer for. This will help you find the appropriate FDR file (the last part of the file name should map to the TK_PID value), and after decoding the file, will help you identify the entries relevant to the task id you are interested in. Each entry should have a ThreadID value equal to the TK_TID value. This is especially important when considering that a single process may have many threads.

Listing servers id's

The command list server show SBLSRVR_NAME, SV_SRVRID allows you to show the server Id created when the server was installed in the Siebel Enterprise. This information is required when configuring the native load balance of AOM's. The configure command for list server will not show the column SV_SRVRID either.

list procs

This command will show the process associated with the Siebel components with some additional data.

srvrmgr:foobar_srv01> configure list procs

SV_NAME (31): Server name

CC_ALIAS (31): Component alias

TK_PID (11): Task process id

TK_SISPROC (11): Task sisproc number

TK_NUM_NORMAL_TASKS (11): Number of normal tasks in this process

TK_NUM_SUBTASK_TASKS (11): Number of subtask tasks in this process

TK_NUM_HIDDEN_TASKS (11): Number of hidden tasks in this process

PROC_VM_FREE_PAGES (11): Process virtual memory free pages

PROC_VM_USED_PAGES (11): Process virtual memory used pages

PROC_PH_USED_PAGES (11): Process physical memory used pages

TK_IS_PROC_ENABLED (31): Is the process enabled for tasks

TK_DISP_RUNSTATE (31): Process run state

TK_SOCKETS (11): Sockets Received

Some sample data:

srvrmgr:foobar_srv01> list procs

SV_NAME CC_ALIAS TK_PID TK_SISPROC TK_NUM_NORMAL_TASKS TK_NUM_SUBTASK_TASKS TK_NUM_HIDDEN_TASKS PROC_VM_FREE_PAGES PROC_VM_USED_PAGES PROC_PH_USED_PAGES TK_IS_PROC_ENABLED TK_DISP_RUNSTATE TK_SOCKETS

------------ ------------------------- ------ ---------- ------------------- -------------------- ------------------- ------------------ ------------------ ------------------ ------------------ ---------------- ----------

foobar_srv01 CommInboundRcvr 5504 29 0 0 35 947650 100925 40205 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 ServerMgr 2153 119 1 0 2 1020680 27895 7538 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 EAIObjMgr_enu 5394 24 0 0 7 914435 134140 74499 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 EAIObjMgr_enu 5371 23 0 0 7 930429 118146 60284 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 EAIObjMgr_enu 5353 22 0 0 7 916442 132133 73079 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu 5558 34 0 0 7 749560 299015 183322 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 ServerMgr 2910 120 1 0 2 1020804 27771 7523 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu 5702 39 0 0 7 714186 334389 216924 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 SiebSrvr 5024 1 2 0 2 1039160 9415 6633 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu 5571 32 1 0 13 712222 336353 217281 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 WfRecvMgr 5184 13 0 0 26 954054 94521 38468 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 ServerMgr 15100 121 1 0 2 1020315 28260 7299 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 WfProcMgr 5203 15 0 0 27 887391 161184 99693 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 AdminNotify 5094 7 0 0 17 1035909 12666 2607 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 SvrTaskPersist 5056 8 1 0 3 961872 86703 40503 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 SRProc 5093 6 2 0 6 995037 53538 30798 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 CommConfigMgr 5487 28 0 0 26 954182 94393 38165 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eSalesObjMgr_enu 5433 25 0 0 7 1018825 29750 6389 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 EAIObjMgr_enu 5313 20 0 0 7 866626 181949 124903 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eSalesCMEObjMgr_enu 5724 40 0 0 7 1018834 29741 6451 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 SCBroker 5048 4 1 0 2 1039526 9049 2375 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 ServerMgr 14885 100 1 0 2 1020803 27772 7788 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 SRBroker 5039 2 43 0 10 1007397 41178 8950 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 EAIObjMgr_enu 5291 19 0 0 7 904051 144524 84758 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 SCCObjMgr_enu 5227 16 0 0 7 1018808 29767 6381 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 WfProcBatchMgr 5162 11 0 0 26 954304 94271 38448 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu 5656 38 1 0 9 730965 317610 200334 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 CommInboundProcessor 5530 30 0 0 56 947578 100997 37553 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 SCBroker 5040 3 1 0 2 1039423 9152 2376 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 ServerMgr 16328 101 1 0 2 1020586 27989 7906 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 ServerMgr 7735 45 1 0 2 1020032 28543 8112 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 FSMSrvr 5053 5 0 0 26 1033215 15360 4564 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 CommOutboundMgr 5516 31 0 0 56 943817 104758 38734 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 AsgnSrvr 5224 14 0 0 26 964218 84357 57768 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu 5670 37 1 0 10 692726 355849 238679 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu 16116 61 0 0 7 745602 302973 193532 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu 5619 35 0 0 7 742789 305786 187294 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 ServerMgr 458 118 1 0 2 1020686 27889 7537 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eProdCfgObjMgr_enu 5462 27 0 0 8 957354 91221 38498 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 XMLPReportServer 5245 18 0 0 26 956796 91779 37351 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCustomerObjMgr_enu 5446 26 0 0 7 1018852 29723 6423 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eChannelObjMgr_enu 5256 17 0 0 7 1018732 29843 6356 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 EAIObjMgr_enu 5332 21 0 0 7 907893 140682 83965 True Running 0

foobar_srv01 eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu 5640 36 2 0 11 738753 309822 191577 True Running 0

As you can see, the presence of PID, component alias and current number of executing tasks are quite useful to have in a single command output. Unfortunately, there is no documentation about the other details.

The command can be used with the additional options for server and for comp as well. For example, to monitor when a server has completely started up, you can either run list procs for server <servername> command and verify all processes are in running state.

/logging

Monday, July 21, 2014

Some notes about srvrmgr usage