Troubleshooting the Agent

Verifying the Version of the Agent

When consulting with the Tidal Support Center about a problem with an agent, one of the most basic pieces of information they need is which version of the agent is being used.

To verify the version of the agent:

Click Administration > Connections on the Navigation pane of the TA Client to display the Connections pane.

Locate the agent with the problem in the various connections listed in the pane.

Look in the Version column of that agent to see the version of the agent being used.

Taking Considerable Time to Reconnect to the Master

If the reconnection process takes too long, check master.props file via Scheduler/config/master.props and adjust the QueuedServerSocketConnections=100 accordingly. By default, if this parameter is not configured, its value is set to 50.

Windows Agents

Proper Configuration of Windows Agents

The Agent for Windows should have been configured properly at the time of installation but sometimes the configuration is unintentionally changed and causes problems.

The Agent for Windows will not operate correctly unless it is configured as follows:

The agent service must be configured to run as a Windows user, either as local to the agent server or a domain user.

The Windows user must be an administrator on the local machine and have these four user rights assigned

Act as part of the Operating System

Logon as a batch

Logon as a service

Replace a process level token

All runtime users must have the Logon as a batch user right on every Windows server that the runtime user will run jobs on.

Note: If you have to change any of the above, it is best to restart the server, as Windows does not always make those changes effective without rebooting.

In the Client Manager, edit each runtime user (and regular user if those are being used to run jobs) and type the Windows password on the Passwords tab of the user’s definition. If a Windows domain is not specified, a runtime user is assumed to be local to the agent where it is running a job.
Also in the Client Manager, from the main menu, open Activities>System Configuration to display the System Configuration dialog and click the Use Passwords to Run Windows Jobs option.

After confirming that the agent service has been configured as recommended, run this test job from a command prompt:
```
C:\WINNT\system32\cmd.exe
```
```
/c set
```
Look at the output for the Username variable to see if the runtime user's name listed. If that is working, then you should be able to run jobs wherever the Windows Authentication is accepted

Diagnostics for a Windows Agent

To run diagnostics for a Windows agent:

Create a shortcut by right-clicking the Windows Desktop and selecting New > Shortcut from the context menu to display the Create Shortcut dialog.

Type the command path in the Type the location of the item field:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\TIDAL\Agent\bin\TidalAgent.exe" Agent=TidalSAAgent_0 Port=5912 Verbosity=Tidaldebug Debug=Yes sysadmiral=yes

Note: Your installation path and port number may be different.

Stop the agent using the Service Control Manager.

Double-click the agent shortcut you created to start the agent in debug mode.

A window named after the agent displays scrolling messages as the agent does its work. The same data displayed in the window is also logged to the Application Log of the Windows Event Viewer. The system must remain logged on and the agent must continue to run in this Application Mode to gather diagnostics.

It is important to modify the properties for the Application Log so it saves an appropriate amount of data.

To modify the properties:

Click the Application Log in the Event View tree.

Right-click and click the Properties option to display the Application Log Properties dialog.

Adjust the value in the Maximum log size field in the Log size section.

The value will vary significantly from agent to agent, depending on the environment and usage. Start with 5-10 megabytes of data and increase as needed. You can configure the Event Viewer to either overwrite the previously written data or stop logging when the log size reaches the maximum size.

To stop diagnostics, close the agent application window and restart the agent from the Service Control Manager.

Unix Agents

Proper Configuration of Unix Agents

The first line of every Unix agent shell script must adhere to standard Unix scripting guidelines and refer to a shell.

Example: #!/bin/sh.

For more information, refer to your Unix system documentation or consult your System Administrator.

Diagnostics for a Unix Agent

When an Agent for Unix generates errors and doesn’t operate properly, you need to contact the Tidal Support Center to help you resolve the technical issues. However, the Tidal Support Center requires specific information on how the Agent for Unix is operating before they can track down the source of the problem. Before contacting the Tidal Support Center about an agent issue, you should turn on diagnostic logging to collect information about the way the agent is functioning. This is the first step that the Tidal Support Center will have you do, if you have not done it before contacting them.

To turn on diagnostic logging:

Type this command on the agent machine to stop the agent:
```
./tagent <agent name> stop
```

Go to the /bin directory and locate the tagent.ini file for the desired agent.

Inside the tagent.ini file, under the port setting, type:
```
ovb=Tidaldebug
```
Save the file and its changes.

Start the agent:
```
./tagent <agent name> start
```
Ideally, you want to reproduce the situation that caused the issue so the diagnostics can log what occurred in the system at that time. As soon as the problem reoccurs, contact the Tidal Support Center.

Note: Once the problem repeats itself and the diagnostic information is recorded, turn off the agent diagnostics by commenting out the debugging parameter:
#ovb=Tidaldebug

Go to the Log directory to get the diagnostic file to send to the Tidal Support Center:
```
cd <agent directory>/<agent name>/logs
```
Each agent instance has its own directory. The diagnostic files are named <agent name>.log and <Master server>.log.

Restarting the agent does not override the recorded information. Though only a small amount of information is normally recorded without the debug parameter, the file will continue to grow in size. You should delete or rename the file after you finish debugging the agent.

Note: Whenever diagnostic logging is being used, you must carefully monitor the amount of disk and database space being consumed. Diagnostic logging can generate large amounts of data and affect system performance.