What is ndsautotrace and how do I use it?

Sometimes the ndsd daemon won't start or the database won't open for various reasons.  The ndstrace utility can be used to help troubleshoot these types of problems.
There are times such as during an install of eDirectory (or OES, which also installs eDirectory) where you are watching a GUI screen and the y2logs are not giving you enough information on the problem.
Problem is that you can't load ndstrace until ndsd has loaded (at least partially) which makes it difficult to capture what you need.
The ndsautotrace utility can help in cases like this. 

Q:  What is ndsautotrace?

A:  ndsautotrace is a utility that is a part of the novell-ndsserv package and should be located in /opt/novell/eDirectory/bin/ndsautotrace
When loaded it will start ‘ndstrace’ at the first opportunity, such as once the daemon ndsd is started.

 

Q:  When should I use ndsautotrace?

 A:  It’s mainly useful while troubleshooting problematic eDirectory installs or troubleshooting ndsd while it’s initializing.  It’s useful because it will load ndstrace and start capturing information at the soonest possible opportunity.  It can be difficult to try and start ndstrace if ndsd runs into some type of an error during initialization.  This tool will typically log enough information during the initialization to help identify the problem.

 

Q:  How do I configure ndsautotrace, e.g. what tags to use and how large the ndstrace file should grow.

 A:  The configuration file is located at /etc/ndsautotrace.conf.  This file is created automatically if it doesn’t exist when ndsauutotrace is loaded for the first time.  TAGS are used to define what ndstrace should write to the ndstrace.log file.  By default it enables all the tags, which is typically the best option when trying to identiy why nmdsd won’t start or why it crashed.  You can also set the maximum size for the ndstrace.log file.  By default, it will be set to 20MB.  The contents of the default /etc/ndsautotrace.conf look like this:

 #NDSTrace Tag groups for 'ndsautotrace'

# Must have a default tag group called "DEFAULT"
# Tags are space delimited. Tags +TIME +TAGS are always set.
DEFAULT=ALL
MAX_FILE_SIZE=20971520

 

 Q:  How do I start and stop ndsautotrace?

 A: To start just type “ndsautotrace” if it can’t find the file type “. /opt/novell/eDirectory/bin/ndspath” then type ndsautotrace.

 You will need to stop ndsautotrace or it will keep ndstrace running.  To stop type:

“ndsautotrace –s”

Q: Where can I get more information on ndsautotrace?

A: run "ndsautotrace -h" or "man ndsautotrace"