Introduction

Writing a few notes on the tool of Tfa on Oracle Real Application Clusters to share my current experiences on this topic. When you create a Tar @ Oracle for an issue on one of your clusters it might very well be that Support is asking to upload Tfa reports. In such case question number one would be do I have that tool installed in my software stack of the cluster-ware. Well first comfort is that as of Oracle 11.2.0.4 this tool is present as part of the standard cluster stack. But .. ( sometimes thinking why does there always have to be a but ). In my specific case Grid Infra structure is 11.2.0.3 so first I had to look if the tool was installed as an add-on to the cluster,  and second of course had to look if it was / is up and running, if it was able to survive a node reboot etc.

Below you will find some notes on the how and why of  this tool.

On the why you should use it part:

Oracle Trace File Analyzer White Paper

Okay that does make a lot of sense since the tool is helping us not only gather various kind of information in the log files on all the cluster nodes, but it is also able to filter that information to hold only data from lets say 4 hours before the incident till 1 hour after the incident.

On the how to part:

As mentioned since the cluster is using Grid Infra structure 11.2.0.3. it was needed to check if tool was installed and was running. Details below are more with regard to the checking if tools is there and is running. Should you need more on the installation process: Oracle Grid Infrastructure Trace File Analyzer Installation

Tfa summary of commands which all have to run as the mighty ROOT:

## checking actions:
cd /opt/crs/product/tfa/bin/
tfactl print actions

## When all is running and you need to collect data as ROOT:
./tfactl diagcollect -all -node all

## which hosts are being monitored:
./tfactl print hosts

Information with regard to  the configuration
ls -ltr /etc/init.d/init.tfa

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 11724 Aug 9 2016 /etc/init.d/init.tfa

## Starting the Tfa Daemon(s):
MYSRVR01hr:root:/root # /etc/init.d/init.tfa start
or 
MYSRVR01hr:root:/opt/crs/product/tfa/bin # ./tfactl start

## enable – disable autostart at node reboot: 
MYSRVR01hr:root:/opt/crs/product/tfa/bin # ./tfactl enable

## show status: 
MYSRVR01hr:root:/opt/crs/product/tfa/bin # ./tfactl print status

## show config:
MYSRVR01hr:root:/opt/crs/product/tfa/bin # ./tfactl print config

##show directories:
MYSRVR01hr:root:/opt/crs/product/tfa/bin # ./tfactl print directories

## collect data for example on all nodes:
# ./tfactl diagcollect -all -node all
or
./tfactl diagcollect -from “MMM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss” -to “MMM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss”
./tfactl diagcollect -from "Jun/30/2017 09:15:00" -to "Jun/30/2017 12:00:00"

### Examples starting tfa 
MYSRVR01hr:root:/root # /etc/init.d/init.tfa start
Starting TFA..
Waiting up to 100 seconds for TFA to be started..
. . . . . 
. . . . . 
Successfully started TFA Process..
. . . . . 
TFA Started and listening for commands

## Example enabling the start of the daemons at server / node reboot:
MYSRVR01hr:root:/opt/crs/product/tfa/bin # ./tfactl enable
TFA autostart has been enabled ..

## Example status
MYSRVR01hr:root:/opt/crs/product/tfa/bin # ./tfactl print status

.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Host | Status of TFA | PID | Port | Version | Build ID | Inventory Status |
+----------+---------------+-------+------+------------+----------------------+------------------+
| MYSRVR01hr | RUNNING | 3608 | 5000 | 12.1.2.5.0 | 12125020150615061618 | COMPLETE |
| MYSRVR02hr | RUNNING | 20057 | 5000 | 12.1.2.5.0 | 12125020150615061618 | COMPLETE |
'----------+---------------+-------+------+------------+----------------------+------------------'

## Example showing current configuration:

MYSRVR01hr:root:/opt/crs/product/tfa/bin # ./tfactl print config
.----------------------------------------------------------.
| MYSRVR02hr                                               |
+---------------------------------------------+------------+
| Configuration Parameter | Value |
+---------------------------------------------+------------+
| TFA version | 12.1.2.5.0 |
| Automatic diagnostic collection | OFF |
| Trimming of files during diagcollection | ON |
| Repository current size (MB) | 466 |
| Repository maximum size (MB) | 1271 |
| Inventory Trace level | 1 |
| Collection Trace level | 1 |
| Scan Trace level | 1 |
| Other Trace level | 1 |
| Max Size of TFA Log (MB) | 50 |
| Max Number of TFA Logs | 10 |
| Max Size of Core File (MB) | 20 |
| Max Collection Size of Core Files (MB) | 200 |
| Automatic Purging | ON |
| Minimum Age of Collections to Purge (Hours) | 12 |
'---------------------------------------------+------------'

.----------------------------------------------------------.
| MYSRVR01hr |
+---------------------------------------------+------------+
| Configuration Parameter | Value |
+---------------------------------------------+------------+
| TFA version | 12.1.2.5.0 |
| Automatic diagnostic collection | OFF |
| Trimming of files during diagcollection | ON |
| Repository current size (MB) | 473 |
| Repository maximum size (MB) | 1170 |
| Inventory Trace level | 1 |
| Collection Trace level | 1 |
| Scan Trace level | 1 |
| Other Trace level | 1 |
| Max Size of TFA Log (MB) | 50 |
| Max Number of TFA Logs | 10 |
| Max Size of Core File (MB) | 20 |
| Max Collection Size of Core Files (MB) | 200 |
| Automatic Purging | ON |
| Minimum Age of Collections to Purge (Hours) | 12 |
'---------------------------------------------+------------'

Happy reading,

Mathijs