The Dirtracer Corner - Lee Trujillo: Tips, Tricks and News on Sun Java Systems Directory Server Tracing tool

Hello all,

I was approached today by a Partner about running DirTracer in the background.  I believe I have been asked about this once before.

Currently I have not tested nor can DirTracer be run in the background.  I just tried this in fact and saw nothing in the databin path, nor in the /tmp area for the runtime log.  I have found a way however.

If I background or no hup it I get no output -> (nohup ./dirtracer -f ./dirtracer.config &).

But if I create a stub script that launches DirTracer with nohup and & and do the same with the stub...it works.

myzone root[/opt/dirtracer]#cat backgrounder
#!/bin/sh

nohup ./dirtracer -f ./dirtracer.config &
myzone root[/opt/dirtracer]#nohup ./backgrounder &
[1] 9159
myzone root[/opt/dirtracer]#Sending output to nohup.out

[1]    Done                          ./backgrounder

In most circumstances, (99% of the time) you should be running DirTracer in the foreground because the runtime is generally short.  I can only see backgrounding the process when you use the MEM_LEAK_TRACKING option or if you have such a long DirTracerrun that you will have to close down your terminals and leave.

Thanks to Brian for this great question.

Lee