Diagnosing Server Problems

NetWare Remote Manager includes several tools to assist you in monitoring the health and status of your server. When you are familiar with the normal health and status of your server, diagnosing problems with your server becomes easier.

Performing the following tasks will help you to become familiar with the health and status of your servers:


Monitoring Server Health

Monitoring the health of your server can help prevent it from getting to a state in which your users cannot access the server or the data on it.

Using NetWare Remote Manager, you can monitor the server's overall health and the health of specific item.

The server's overall health is indicated by the color of the circle displayed next to the server icon in the header frame for NetWare Remote Manager. Green means the server health is good. Yellow means that the server's health is suspect. Red means the server's health is bad or has a problem. If the circle goes black or a message is displayed that the page cannot be found, the connection to your server might be lost.

The server's overall health is determined by items that are selected in the Include list on the detailed Server Health Monitoring page. By default, all items are checked.

If the status of any item that is selected in the Include list changes to yellow (suspect) or red (bad), the health status indicator light on the header frame changes to indicate there is a problem. If more than one item changes, the worst status will indicate the server's overall status. When the status for all items returns to green (good), then the health light indicator changes back to green (good).

The server's health status, reported by the health status indicator, is updated every five seconds, but the graphic refreshes only if the status changes.


Monitoring Specific Health Indicators from the Server Health Monitoring Page

To access the Server Health Monitoring page, click the overall health status indicator or the Health Monitor link in the header frame or click the Health Monitor link in the navigation frame.


 Health Monitor Link icon in the header frame

The Server Health Monitoring page shows the health status (green, good; yellow, suspect; or red, bad) for all known components of the system, as well as current, peak, and maximum values. When an item is not checked in the Include column, it is not included when determining the overall server health and the values for Status, Current, Peak, and Max are not displayed.

The following items are key indicators of your server's health. You can change the thresholds for the Suspect and Critical values of these indicators.

Additional items are tracked on the Server Health Monitoring page and are displayed depending on the NLMTM programs that are loaded on the server.


Configuring Health Thresholds

If you have a server that runs differently than normal, you might want to configure the suspect and critical threshold values to something other than the default.

To change the criteria for the suspect (yellow/suspect) and critical (red/bad), status indicators, do the following:

  1. From the Server Health Monitoring page, click Configure Health Thresholds and then the Description name link for the item you want to change.

  2. Enter the new Suspect or Critical value and click OK.


Configuring E-mail Notification for Server Health Status

Rather than manually checking the status, you can configure NetWare Remote Manger to send an e-mail to notify you when the server's health status changes to any value other than green (good).

When you want to be notified about the status of an item, do the following:

  1. Check the Notify check box for that item on the Server Health Monitoring page.

  2. Click the Mail Control Panel link on the Server Health Monitoring page.

  3. Enter the required information on the Mail Notification Control page and then click Save.

    A primary server and at least one user on the notification list is required.

  4. Reload the PORTAL and HTTPSTK NLM programs from the NetWare Remote Manager configuration page.

    1. Click the Configure link in the header frame.

    2. Click each of the Restart links for restarting PORTAL.NLM and HTTPSTK.


Troubleshooting a Suspect or Bad Health Status

If the health status of your server changes to a suspect or bad state, do the following:

  1. Access the Server Health Monitoring page.

  2. Look for the specific health item that has changed status.

  3. View the information for the item that has changed by clicking the Info icon for the item.

    This information outlines the specific health criteria (thresholds) for green, yellow, red or statuses in that component. It also provides suggestions in some cases for what might be going wrong in that component if a yellow or red indicator is displayed.

  4. Perform the recommended or appropriate action for the health item that has changed.


Monitoring the General Health of a Group of Servers

NetWare Remote Manager lets you build and use server groups. When you build a server group, you can select Health Monitor and Group Operations and then build a Multiple Server Health Monitor page that

To build a Multiple Server Health Monitor page, do the following:

  1. Click the Build Group link in the navigation frame.

  2. Build the server group.

  3. On the Server Group Operations page, complete the Health Monitor and Group Operations options.

    For a description of the options, see the online help.

  4. (Optional) If you want to use this server group later, save the group file by clicking the Save Group File button and entering a path and filename for the group. We recommend using a name that represents the group you built.

    IMPORTANT:  The specified path for the server group file must be a full path on the current server that contains the volume name as the first element. For example:

    \SYS\Multiple Health Configuration

    VOL1\TEST\HLTHLIST.CFG

  5. Click the Multiple Server Health Monitor button.

To view the Multiple Server Health Monitor page for a server group at a later time, do the following:

  1. Click the Load Group File link in the navigation frame.

  2. On the Server Group File page, enter the path or browse to the configuration file for the server group that you previously saved.

  3. Click the Build Server Group button.


Profiling CPU Utilization and Accessing Additional Debug Options

The Profiling and Debug Information page lets you view information about active and suspended threads, their states, the owning NetWare Loadable ModuleTM (NLM) programs, and execution times.

To access the Profiling and Debug Information page, click the Profile / Debug link in the navigation frame.

This information can help you identify processes that might be running abnormally on a server, such as processes that use too much CPU time. Processes that run abnormally might cause the server to abend. Sometimes you can temporarily resolve high-utilization problems on the server by identifying the offending thread and its parent NLM, and then unloading and reloading the NLM.

From this page, you can do the following:


Viewing CPU Execution Profile Data by Thread

When you access the Profiling and Debug Information page, the Execution Profile Data by Thread table is the default view displayed.

The Thread Name column shows the name of the thread being executed. To get more information about a specific thread, click the thread-name link for that thread.

Thread ID and Thread State detailed information is provided mostly to assist code developers in identifying and debugging problems with their code. At the administration level, this information is usually helpful in identifying problems with a specific NLM or with threads causing the server to hang or run slow.

If the thread was suspended by Abend Recovery, then the information includes details about the thread state at the time it was suspended.

To get information about the NLM program that owns the thread, click the NLM program name.

To profile where a thread is spending its time running, click the Execution Time link for that thread.


Viewing CPU Execution Profile Data by NLM

To view CPU Execution Profile Data by NLM, click the Profile CPU Execution by NLM link on the Profiling and Debug Information page.

In this view, you can see a 1/2-second profile of the server operating system as it is executing, the place where it is executing, and the NLM programs that the processor is spending its time in.

To see where the processor is spending time within a specific NLM, click the link in the Execution Time column for that NLM. For more information about the NLM program, click the name for the program.

If the server is idle, the main NLM programs listed will be LSL.NLMTM and the SERVER.NLM.

The percentage values shown in these tables are a detail of the overall sever's CPU utilization. If Processor 0 utilization is at 10 percent, the information on this page shows the breakdown of that 10 percent utilization.


Viewing Detailed Thread Information

To view a list of all the threads in the system, click the Thread Information link on the Profiling and Debug Information page.

This information is usually helpful in identifying problems with a specific NLM or with threads causing the server to hang or run slow.

To get more information about a specific thread, click the thread-name link for that thread.


Performing Additional Debug Options

If you are developing modules to run on NetWare and you want to access additional debug options, click the Additional Debug Options link on the Profiling and Debug Information page.

On the Additional Debug Options page, you can do the following tasks at the specific location while the server is still running:


Running and Viewing the Server Configuration Report

Running the server configuration report is especially helpful when you want to compare the configuration of two different servers or have a record of your server setting before making any changes.

This report can also be used by Novell Technical ServicesSM to help you diagnose problems with your server that might be caused by running outdated NLM programs. When you view the report, you can also print and save the report for your network documentation.

This report contains the following information:

To run and view a Server Configuration report, click Run Config Report in the navigation frame and then click View Report on the Server Configuration Report page.

To send this report to someone from the Server Configuration Report page, enter the person's e-mail address in the e-mail address field and then click Send Report.

Before you can Send this report via e-mail, you must set up an e-mail server and complete the required information on the Mail Notification Control page. To access the Mail Notification Control Page, click the Configure icon in the navigation frame and the Access Mail Notification Control Page link on the NetWare Remote Manager Configuration Options page.

To print or save this report, view the report from the Server Configuration Report page and then print or save the results using your browser's features.



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