Testing and Debugging
SFX Admin Debugging Tool
The Debugging tool allows the SFX administrator to determine the source of errors that may occur in the SFX flow, such as missing targets from the SFX menu, corrupted target URLs, proxy problems, and some server errors.
Debugging can be used in:
- The SFX menu screen
- The target window
For a full description of the debugging tool, refer to the Troubleshooting and Debugging section of the SFX Advanced User's Guide.
Using the Apache Log Files
Apache log files can be used in order to debug requests sent to the SFX server. The log files that are created by each Apache server (reverse proxy server and instance-specific server) are:
- error_log – Any error that occurs while sending a request to the server is logged in this file.
- access_log – Any access request made to the SFX server is logged in this file.
Both files are located at the following paths:
- For the reverse proxy Apache server:
/exlibris/sfx_ver/sfx4_1/proxy/logs
In order to view the content of the files, you must log on to the server as the sfxglb41 user.
- For the instance-specific Apache server:
/exlibris/sfx_ver/sfx4_1/<instance>/logs/apache
In order to view the content of the files, you must log on to the server as an instance user.
SFX Menu Monitoring
SFX includes a source that can be used to check whether the SFX server is up and running, without affecting SFX statistics.
When sending an OpenURL for monitoring purposes, use following sid:
|
rfr_id=info:sid/sfxit.com:site_up_check |
Where the value (after rfr_id=) should be URL encoded.
For example:
|
<base_url?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_ctx_fmt=infofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsfxit.com%3Asite_up_check&rft.genre=journal&rft.issn=0000-0019&rft.date=2009&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal |
In the SFX KnowledgeBase, this sid corresponds to the following source:
Source name: SFX_SITE_UP_CHECK
Source ID: SITE_UP_CHECK
Requests using this source information are not included in the statistics table, so this is the recommended sid for any SFX menu monitoring tool.
SFX Menu Log Files
By default, a log file of each SFX menu is generated by SFX in the /exlibris/sfx_ver/sfx4_1/<instance>/logs directory of each instance named sfxmenu.<pid>. It is removed automatically when the SFX menu is displayed to the end user. It is possible to temporarily disable the deletion of the log file for debugging purposes.
To temporarily disable the deletion of the log file:
- Log on as the instance user:
- Type cn to go to the configuration directory.
- Type vi ctx_object.config to open the file.
- Locate the html_menu section.
- In the keep_log parameter:
- set the value to 0 to have the SFX menu log file removed automatically.
- set the value to 1 to disable the automatic removal of the SFX menu log file.
It is not recommended to disable the deletion of log files for a long period, since this causes a large amount of files to be generated in the /exlibris/sfx_ver/sfx4_1/<instance>/logs directory.