Troubleshooting

ActiveBatch was designed to assist operators and designers track down their batch job problems. First, let us reiterate the difference between a job definition and a job instance. An instance is an execution copy of a definition. When a job triggers, it is cloned from the definition.  An instance is created and sent to an Execution AgentThe Execution Agent ("Agent") is the component that runs ActiveBatch jobs. It must be installed and configured on a system that is specified in the Machine property of an Execution Queue object. The Job Scheduler uses the Queue's Machine property to determine what system to connect to in order to dispatch jobs. Most ActiveBatch environments have more than one system with an Agent installation. Which Agent to send the Job to is based on the Submission Queue that is assigned (associated) to each Job, a required Job property. to run.

 

When something goes wrong, you should check the job's instance history. See View Instance History for more details. The instance history provides all the details about the instance, including: general information (creation time, start time, instance ID, etc.), how variables resolved (their values), the audit trail (e.g. created, started, etc.), the job log file (capturing standard output and standard errors), and properties, as they were set when the instance ran, and their current settings.

 

Typically if a job fails due to a non ActiveBatch reason (something happened to the process outside of ActiveBatch's control) the first place to look would be the Job log file. Logging is enabled by default, however it can be turned off.  As a general best practice, keep it enabled. For more information about Job log files, see Logging

 

Next, if you see an ActiveBatch error runtime or design time, check to see if the message matches anything specified here: ActiveBatch Messages.

 

Runtime errors that are Abat specific, that is, you see and "ABAT" message in the Exit Code Description, sometimes have more details about the error logged in the Execution Agent log file. On the system where the job ran, you will find Agent log files.  Navigate to the ActiveBatch Installation directory and look for a Logs subdirectory. Agent log files are named abateagent.log for Windows and abatemgr.log for Unix/Linux. Older log files have a number appended at the end of the file name, where 1 is the previous log file when compared to the current one, and 10 is the oldest. Open the Agent log file and look for a date/time that matches what you see in AbatConsole, regarding the ABAT error. There may be additional details in the file.

 

If you believe you have encountered an ABAT error that is specific to the Job Scheduler component (e.g. the database connection to the backend database failed), then check the Scheduler log file for any postings around the time the incident occurred. On the Scheduler server, navigate to the ActiveBatch Installation directory (the default is C:\Program Files\ASCI\ActiveBatchVXX\Logs and open the current Scheduler log file named abatjss.log. Older logs have a number appended at the end of the file name, where 1 is the previous log file when compared to the current one, and 10 is the oldest.