Situation troubleshooting

This section provides information about both general situation problems and problems with the configuration of situations. See the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Troubleshooting Guide for more information about troubleshooting for situations.

General situation problems

Table 8 lists general problems that might occur with situations.

Table 8. General situation problems and solutions
Problem Solution
Monitoring activity requires too much disk space. Check the RAS trace logging settings that are described in Setting RAS trace parameters. For example, trace logs grow rapidly when you apply the ALL logging option.
Monitoring activity requires too many system resources.

Disk capacity planning for historical data describes the performance impact of specific attribute groups. If possible, decrease your use of the attribute groups that require greater system resources.
A formula that uses mathematical operators appears to be incorrect. For example, if you were monitoring Linux, a formula that calculates when Free Memory falls under 10 percent of Total Memory does not work: LT #'Linux_VM_Stats.Total_Memory' / 10 This formula is incorrect because situation predicates support only logical operators. Your formulas cannot have mathematical operators.
Note:
The Situation Editor provides alternatives to math operators. Regarding the example, you can select % Memory Free attribute and avoid the need for math operators.

You want to change the appearance of situations when they are displayed in the Navigation tree.
  1. Right-click an item in the Navigation tree.
  2. Select Situations in the pop-up menu. The Situation Editor window is displayed.
  3. Select the situation that you want to modify.
  4. Use the State pull-down menu in the lower right of the window to set the status and appearance of the Situation when it triggers.
    Note:
    The State setting is not related to severity settings in IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console.
When a situation is triggered in the Event Log attribute group, it remains in the Situation Event Console as long as the event ID entry is present in the Event Log workspace. When this event ID entry is removed from the Event Log workspace on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal, the situation is also cleared even if the actual problem that caused the event is not resolved, and the event ID entry is also present in the Windows Event Viewer. There is a timeout on the cache of events for the NT Event Log group. Increase the cache time of Event Log collection to meet your requirements by adding the following variable and timeout value to the KXXENV file for the agent: CDP_NT_EVENT_LOG_CACHE_TIMEOUT=3600

This variable determines how long events from the NT Event Log are kept.

Problems with configuration of situations

Table 9 lists problems that might occur with configuring situations.

This section provides information for troubleshooting for agents. Be sure to consult the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Troubleshooting Guide for more general troubleshooting information.

Table 9. Problems with configuring situations that you solve in the Situation Editor
Problem Solution
Note:
To get started with the solutions in this section, perform these steps:
  1. Launch the Tivoli Enterprise Portal.
  2. Click Edit > Situation Editor.
  3. In the tree view, choose the agent whose situation you want to modify.
  4. Choose the situation in the list. The Situation Editor view is displayed.
The situation for a specific agent is not visible in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal. Open the Situation Editor. Access the All managed servers view. If the situation is absent, confirm that the monitoring server has been seeded for the agent. If not, seed the server, as described in the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Installation and Setup Guide.
The monitoring interval is too long. Access the Situation Editor view for the situation that you want to modify. Check the Sampling interval area in the Formula tab. Adjust the time interval as needed.
The situation did not activate at startup. Manually recycle the situation as follows:
  1. Right-click the situation and choose Stop Situation.
  2. Right-click the situation and choose Start Situation.
Note:
You can permanently avoid this problem by placing a check mark in the Run at Startup option of the Situation Editor view for a specific situation.
The situation is not displayed. Click the Action tab and check whether the situation has an automated corrective action. This action can occur directly or through a policy. The situation might be resolving so quickly that you do not see the event or the update in the graphical user interface.
An Alert event has not occurred even though the predicate has been properly specified.

Check the logs, reports, and workspaces.
A situation fires on an unexpected managed object. Confirm that you have distributed and started the situation on the correct managed system.
The product did not distribute the situation to a managed system. Click the Distribution tab and check the distribution settings for the situation.
The situation does not fire. This problem can be caused when incorrect predicates are present in the formula that defines the situation. For example, the managed object shows a state that normally triggers a monitoring event, but the situation is not true because the wrong attribute is specified in the formula.

In the Formula tab, analyze predicates as follows:

  1. Click the fx icon in the upper-right corner of the Formula area. The Show formula window is displayed.
    1. Confirm the following details in the Formula area at the top of the window:
      • The attributes that you intend to monitor are specified in the formula.
      • The situations that you intend to monitor are specified in the formula.
      • The logical operators in the formula match your monitoring goal.
      • The numerical values in the formula match your monitoring goal.
    2. (Optional) Click the Show detailed formula check box in the lower left of the window to see the original names of attributes in the application or operating system that you are monitoring.
    3. Click OK to dismiss the Show formula window.
  2. (Optional) In the Formula area of the Formula tab, temporarily assign numerical values that immediately trigger a monitoring event. The triggering of the event confirms that other predicates in the formula are valid.
    Note:
    After you complete this test, you must restore the numerical values to valid levels so that you do not generate excessive monitoring data based on your temporary settings.

See the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Troubleshooting Guide for additional information about situations that do not fire.
Table 10. Problems with configuration of situations that you solve in the Workspace area
Problem Solution
Situation events are not displayed in the Events Console view of the workspace. Associate the situation with a Navigator item.
Note:
The situation does not need to be displayed in the workspace. It is sufficient that the situation be associated with any Navigator item.
You do not have access to a situation.
Note:
You must have administrator privileges to perform these steps.
  1. Select Edit > Administer Users to access the Administer Users window.
  2. In the Users area, select the user whose privileges you want to modify.
  3. In the Permissions tab, Applications tab, and Navigator Views tab, select the permissions or privileges that correspond to the user role.
  4. Click OK.
A managed system seems to be offline.
  1. Select Physical View and highlight the Enterprise Level of the navigator tree.
  2. Select View > Workspace > Managed System Status to see a list of managed systems and their status.
  3. If a system is offline, check network connectivity and the status of the specific system or application.