FFST is a programming concept that uses a set of software tools and services to capture error information at the time of a code failure. You view the error information using system error log or PM Dump Facility dump formatter to determine the cause of the problem. You capture error information by placing a call to the FFSTProbe API in your code. You instrument your code by calling FFSTProbe and specifying which data to collect.
When your properly instrumented code encounters an unsuspected or unrecoverable error, the code immediately calls the FFSTProbe API to capture failure related information. Your code specifies the parameters to capture data when calling the FFSTProbe function. The system creates an error log entry each time your code calls the FFSTProbe function. The log entry will contain the information your code specifies in the call to FFSTProbe. After the call, the system returns control to your code unless the system triggered a system dump. System dumps automatically restart the system. Additional error information can be collected by using a Probe Control Table (PCT) entry. System dumps are triggered by using PCT entries. The captured information that is contained in the error log entry can include event trace data, program error information, or user-defined data.
Therefore, FFST consists of a collection of functions, commands, and utilities within the Problem Determination Tools folder. Use the utilities to do the following:
Summary of Functions and Interfaces, provides an overview of the interfaces to FFST. Problem Determination APIs, provides descriptions of the API functions.
This chapter provides the information you need to instrument your code. It may be helpful to have the OS/2 Warp Version 4 Tools Reference document available for reference while using this book. The associated references are available on the Toolkit CD ROM.