Lotus Notes Tutorial – Lotus Notes and Domino Enterprise Education

There are a number of Notes.ini settings you can use to analyze Lotus Notes agent problems. You set these variables in your server’s Notes.ini file when debugging scheduled server-based agents, or in your Notes client’s Notes.ini file when debugging client-based scheduled agents.

Note that these variables are only used for debugging scheduled agents run by the Agent Manager in Lotus Domino. As we mentioned earlier, HTTP, router, console, RunOnServer, and interactive client agents are not run by the Agent Manager. Therefore the Notes.ini variables discussed in this section have no effect on these agents. (We discuss how to debug agents run by tasks other than Agent Manager later in this article.)

The Notes.ini variable Debug_Amgr turns on Agent Manager debugging, which can be useful for diagnosing problems with scheduled agents (both on the Domino server as well as the Notes client). When you discover that your scheduled agent won’t run, the first thing you can do is add the following line to your Notes.ini file:

Debug_AMgr = flag

where flag can be one or more of the following (listed in alphabetical order):

Setting Debug_Amgr=* provides the most information, but it may generate more output than you want. Also, be aware that turning on all debugging flags typically results in a five percent performance hit on average user response time.

The output appears in the console log and the Notes Log. This variable can also be set interactively from the server console (we discuss the console commands later in this article). If you change the Notes.ini file, you must restart the Agent Manager (or the server). If you set the variable using the console commands the restart is not necessary.

You can also turn on agent execution logging by adding the following line to the Notes.ini file. (You can also do this in the server’s Server Configuration document in the Domino Directory.)

Log_AgentManager = value

where value can be one of the following:

The Log_AgentManager setting provides you with a subset of the debugging information that Debug_AMgr generates. This option provides less output, but also has less impact on performance. If you have problem agents, you may want Log_AgentManager turned on at all times to record additional information in the log. If you have both Log_AgentManager and Debug_AMgr specified, the Debug_AMgr settings take precedence.

Background agents (by definition) cannot generate output to the user interface (UI). All output generated by the background agent (for example, print statements) goes to the server console and to the Notes Log under Miscellaneous events. The same is true of the error and warning messages generated on behalf of the agent. So, it is important to always examine the server console or Notes Log for this information.

You also can record server console messages in a text file by adding the Debug_Outfile setting to your server’s Notes.ini file. For example, Debug_Outfile=”C:\mydebug.txt” instructs the server to output console messages to a file called mydebug.txt. You might find it easier to search this file rather than to examine entries in the Notes Log or the server console. Bear in mind, however, that the extra I/O can adversely affect performance.

If you are running locally scheduled agents, the debugging information does not appear on the server console because Agent Manager code runs locally on the client rather than on the server. In this case, you can output the information to a text file by adding the Debug_Outfile setting to your client’s Notes.ini file. Then the file will be created locally on your workstation.

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