The OS/2 Trace facility is an important RAS mechanism in the OS/2 product. It allows specific events within the operating system, in system extensions, and in applications to be recorded in a circular System Trace buffer. Software developers can create tracepoints that are used to monitor the execution of software modules.
The OS/2 Trace facility includes two important utility programs. The OS/2 Trace control utility, TRACE.EXE, is used to enable and disable the tracing of events. Entries within the System Trace buffer can be formatted for viewing by using the OS/2 Trace Formatter utility, TRACEFMT.EXE. The Trace Formatter can also be used to copy the contents of the System Trace buffer to disk for processing on another system.
The general categories of events that are traced in OS/2 are:
For an interface or event, there are generally two tracepoints. A pre-invocation trace and a post-invocation trace. One can determine the action taken by the system for a particular event by matching the two corresponding trace events in the trace output.
For more information on the OS/2 Trace facility, refer to the OS/2 Command Reference and the OS/2 Warp System Trace Facility online books. (The latter book is shipped as part of OS/2 Warp Version 4. It may or may not be part of the OS/2 Warp Server for SMP online documentation.)