Collecting Diagnostic Information by Using RDA

9 Collecting Diagnostic Information by Using RDA

Learn how to use Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) to monitor your Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) system.

Topics in this document:

Collecting Diagnostic Information by Using RDA

Collecting Diagnostic Information by Using RDA

Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) is an Oracle standard tool used to collect diagnostic data from your system applications environment.

Note:

RDA replaces the Support Informer utility. Support Informer is obsolete and no longer supported. However, Support Informer libraries continue to be packaged with BRM. The libraries are accessed by the RDA profile named SupportInformer at run time.

Use RDA to collect information about your BRM system. When you submit a service request (SR) to Oracle Technical Support, you must also provide an RDA output file. The RDA output file provides a comprehensive view of your system configuration and contains diagnostic data used by Oracle Technical Support to diagnose problems. This minimizes the number of requests from Oracle Technical Support for additional information, which can reduce the service request resolution time.

You can use RDA to collect BRM diagnostic information. The information collected from BRM includes:

Component log files

RDA collects component log data from the component .pinlog, .log, and Infranet.properties files. For example, RDA collects the log data for BRM invoice formatter from formatter.pinlog, formatter.log, and Infranet.properties.
Application log files

RDA collects application log data from the application .pinlog, .log, and Infranet.properties files. For example, RDA collects the log data for Batch Controller from batch_controller.pinlog, BatchController.log, and Infranet.properties.
Configuration files

RDA collects configuration data from the pin.conf file. For example, RDA collects CMMP configuration data from the CMMP pin.conf file.
Other files

RDA collects installation and version details from the vpd.properties and Oracle_home/inventory/registry.xml files.

To find BRM component information, RDA looks in the BRM_home/RDA directory.

RDA collects the following customer-specific information:

Company name
Contact person
Contact email
Comment on the collection
Service request (when applicable)

Caution:

When you run rda.sh, the script returns the "Perl not found in the PATH" error and the command fails. To work around this issue, remove the .config file (hidden file) in the RDA directory. Oracle recommends that you do not use shell script for RDA.

Installing Remote Diagnostic Agent

You can use the RDA JAR file packaged with the BRM software. The RDA JAR file is available in the BRM_home/RDA directory. You can extract and use this JAR file to run RDA.

To extract the RDA JAR file:

Go to the BRM_home/RDA directory.
Run the following command:
```
jar -xvf RDA.jar
```

Note:

RDA is not supported on Windows.
RDA collects diagnostic and configuration data for all BRM components and applications only from the server on which RDA is running. To collect data for BRM components and databases on other servers, install and run RDA on the other servers.

To determine whether RDA is installed on a server, run the following command:

perl rda.pl -cv

If RDA is installed on the server without any error, the following message is displayed: “No issues found in the RDA installation."

RDA includes the SupportInformer profile, which runs the following modules:

S380BRM

Collects Oracle Communications BRM information.
S105PROF

Collects the user profile data.
S110PERF

Collects performance information.
S100OS

Collects operating system information.

Note:

In addition to the preceding modules, the RDA profile runs other modules, such as INI, CFG, END, RDSP, and LOAD.

Running Remote Diagnostic Agent

To run RDA:

Go to the BRM_home/RDA directory and source the source.me file:

Bash shell:
```
source source.me.sh
```
C shell:
```
source source.me.csh
```
To collect system information, verify that the PIN_HOME environment variable is set to the BRM installation directory.
To run RDA, you must first perform an initial setup and then run data collection. To perform the initial setup, run the following command:
```
perl rda.pl -S
```
Run one or more of the following commands:
- To identify the list of modules:
```
perl rda.pl -L m
```
- To identify the list of profiles:
```
perl rda.pl -L p
```
- To identify the list of modules for the available profiles:
```
perl rda.pl -x profiles
```
- To perform BRM data collection using default values:
```
perl rda.pl -v
```
  Note:
  
  To collect database-specific data, you must run the command as a SYSDBA because DBA privileges are required to collect the database tables data.

When you run RDA, it prompts for information to determine what data to collect and for which products. You can choose to accept the default values or change them based on your BRM system configuration. RDA saves all your responses to the /rda/setup.cfg file.

For example, to initialize data collection and to generate the output files, RDA prompts for the following setup information:

S000INI: Initializes the Data Collection

Enter the prefix for all the files generated
Hit 'Return' to accept the default (RDA)
> 
Enter the directory used for all the files generated
Hit 'Return' to accept the default (/rda/output)
> 
Do you want to keep report packages from previous runs (Y/N)?
Hit 'Return' to accept the default (N)
> 
Is a fresh collection done as default action (Y/N)?
Hit 'Return' to accept the default (Y)
> 
Enter the Oracle Home to be used for data analysis
Hit 'Return' to accept the default
> 
Enter the domain name of this server
Hit 'Return' to accept the default (portal.com)
>

You can also run RDA in noninteractive mode by using command-line options:

rda.pl -v -d -S -C -R -P -p profile_name [-db_version]

-v: Set verbose mode
-d: Set debug mode
-S: Set up specified modules
-C: Collect diagnostic information
-R: Generate specified reports
-P: Package the reports
-p profile_name [-db_version]: Specify the setup profile and the database version. The database version is used only to collect database-specific data.

To collect BRM diagnostic data, run the following command:

perl rda.pl -vdSCRP -p SupportInformer

To collect BRM- and database-specific data, run the following command:

perl rda.pl -vdSCRP -p SupportInformer-DB12c

Note:

The database version in the SupportInformer profile depends on the version of the database installed for BRM.

See "BRM Software Compatibility" in BRM Compatibility Matrix for the version of the database.

The final output is packaged in an archive located in the output directory chosen during RDA setup. RDA output is not encrypted and can be viewed by anyone using any Web browser.

For information on reporting RDA problems, see "Contacting Technical Support".