When you use Zowe, log and trace files are written on both your local workstation and z/OS®.

Console output

All Zowe CLI CICS® deploy plug-in commands send output to the console when invoked. Very often, enough information is provided for you to diagnose and pinpoint the cause of a problem. The commands cics-deploy push, cics-deploy deploy and cics-deploy undeploy accept a --verbose command-line option which can generate extra information if needed.

zowe.log

The .zowe directory on your local workstation contains log files, profiles, and plug-ins. The location of this directory can be customized as described in Setting the Zowe CLI home directory and logging level set as described in Setting Zowe CLI log levels.

You can use the following command to display messages written to the log file as they occur. This can be useful when troubleshooting problems when using zowe and zowe cics-plugin commands in another terminal.

On Windows, use the Powershell command:

Get-Content $env:USERPROFILE\.zowe\zowe\logs\zowe.log -Tail 30 -wait

On Linux, use command: tail -f -n 0 ~/.zowe/zowe/logs/zowe.log

On macOS, use command: tail -f -n 0 ~/.zowe/zowe/logs/zowe.log

Node.js logs

By default, CICS writes Node.js log files on z/OS to the /tmp directory. However, the generate bundle command creates a number of files including nodejsapps/<my app name>.profile (often referred to as the Node.js profile), which you can edit to specify a more convenient log file location. Such logs get written to the directory referenced by the environment variable WORK_DIR. For example, you might edit your Node.js profile so that it includes the line:

WORK_DIR=/u/<your user id>/nodelogs

This causes CICS to write all Node.js logs to the specified directory.

Files typically written to WORK_DIR include:

  • LOG
  • STDERR
  • STDOUT
  • TRACE

They can all be useful when identifying the cause of an error, especially STDERR.

JES job logs

If you are familiar with the z/OS environment, you can often find some useful diagnostics by accessing the JES job log associated with the CICS region you deployed to. The cics-deploy push command outputs the job IDs for all the CICS regions in the scope after a deployment. The MSGUSR, SYSPRINT, SYSOUT and JESMSGLG spool files can all provide useful information. If you are not so fluent with the world of z/OS, you may need to discuss your needs with one of your organization’s CICS system administrators.

Tags: troubleshooting