KB-2250 How to run the Appian Log Generator scripts

Purpose

Providing different log files depending on the underlying issue is often a vital step to further an investigation. Appian Log Generator scripts are quick and efficient ways to generate tar files of logs belonging to different Appian components. The scripts replace the manual effort required to identify, zip, compress different files and folders relevant to different Appian components. This article explains how to run the log generator scripts. 

What are the Appian Log Generator scripts?

Appian Support maintains two scripts for log generation:

1. appian_sm_log_generator.sh - This script retrieves:
   1.  The five most  recent service_manager*.log.
   2. The service-manager directory which has the kafka and zookeeper logs.
   3. The forty five most recent db_* logs.
2. appian_tomcat_ss_ads_log_generator.sh - This script retrieves:
   1. The five most recent tomcat-stdOut* log.
   2. The search-server directory hosting the search-server logs.
   3. The data-server directory hosting the data-server logs.

Note that the script only gathers the logs from the server that the script is run on. The script should be run individually on each server that the logs should be fetched from.

Instructions

The script to gather engine, service-manager, kafka, and zookeeper logs can be downloaded here.

The script to gather tomcat, search-server, and Appian data-server logs can be downloaded here.

Run the following steps to execute the script:

1. Place the relevant script in the <APPIAN_HOME>/logs of the server the logs need to be generated on.
   1. For high availability environments, the script should be placed in <APPIAN_HOME>/shared-logs/*server_name* folder of the server the logs need to be generated on. For example: <APPIAN_HOME>/shared-logs/machine1.example.com/
2. Make the script executable. For example:
   1. chmod +x appian_tomcat_ss_ads_log_generator.sh
3. Execute the script. For example:
   1. ./appian_tomcat_ss_ads_log_generator.sh
4. The script will generate the a file of the format hostname_date*.tar.gz in the directory the script is executed in.
5. Attach the newly generated tar.gz file to the Support Case.

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 18.3 and later.

Last Reviewed: June 2023