There is a utility that will help you identify some of the information associated with your problem and will collect other relevant information to assist DB2 Customer Support to understand your environment and your problem. Much of what is collected using this utility is discussed in the rest of this chapter. The utility is db2support.
Details about the syntax and command line options is found in the Command Reference.
The purpose of the utility is to collect environmental data about your client or server machine that is running DB2; and then to collect and package a large portion of the output as browsable XML, HTML, or a compressed file archive. The utility also has an option that allows for the collection of some data from you about the nature of your problem using an interactive question and answer process. This process will help you clarify the problem and also provide information to DB2 Customer Support when you finally contact them regarding your problem.
The utility produces a compressed collection (single file archive) of important database system information. Included in this archive is an HTML report of the most essential information, which you can use to view the information.
By default, db2support will not collect table data, schema (DDL), or logs in order to protect the security and sensitivity of customer data. With some options, the user may elect to include aspects of their schema and data (such as including archived logs). Options that expose database schema or data should be used carefully. When db2support is invoked, a message indicating how sensitive data is dealt with will be displayed.
The following are the files to be collected and compressed into a single archive:
Collected under all conditions
Optionally collected
The following files make up the content of the HTML report:
Collected under all conditions
Collected if '-s' is specified
Collected if DB2 has been started
Collected if -c has been specified and a connection to the database can be made
If '-q' is specified, collect the following
The interactive question and answer mode is started. With the exception of an optional "describe your problem" question and a small number of requests for customer information, all of the questions will have multiple choice answers from which to select. All of the questions, including follow up questions, and the answers will be collected. In some cases, the utility will ask you to carry out a task and place the results of that task in an additional directory. A small decision tree is used during the interactive mode to determine the questions to ask. These interactive questions assist in determining the category of the problem and based on the category a few other relevant questions may be asked and additional data collected. At the end of the questions, any data that would have been collected in the automatic mode, will also be collected. The answers to all questions are stored in preparation to be sent to service along with any data collected in automatic mode.
If you are running db2support on a non-English installation and are experiencing difficulties properly viewing detailed_system_info.html, you may need to use Internet Explorer version 5 or later with DOS encoding. To change the encoding, select View --> Encoding --> Central European (DOS). If you do not already have the required encoding support, then Internet Explorer prompts you to download the required files from the Microsoft Updates web site. This information does not apply to double-byte languages (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean).
To view the syntax for the DB2 Support Tool one page at a time, run the following command:
db2support | more