Capture Genesys Pulse Collector memory dumps

This information is useful when you need to:

• Take a memory dump from a running Genesys Pulse Collector process.
• Configure an operating system for automatically generating crash dumps when Genesys Pulse Collector crashes.

Take a Memory Dump of the Running Genesys Pulse Collector Process on Linux

1. Open a Linux terminal.
2. Confirm the GCore utility is installed from the gdb package by typing gcore in the terminal. If the GCore utility is not available, install it:
   1. Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install gdb
   2. RHEL, CentOS: sudo yum install gdb
3. Determine the process ID of Genesys Pulse Collector using the following command: ps -ef | grep collector
4. Change directories to the one to store the dump (for example: cd ~/memory_dumps).
5. Run commands: gcore <PID> where <PID> is process ID
6. You should get the file core.<PID>.
7. If you need to submit this core dump file to Genesys:
   1. Compress it (XZ or BZip2 are strongly recommended, as long as they give better compression ratio):
      1. with XZ: xz -6 core.<PID> 
      2. or with BZip2: bzip2 -9 core.<PID>
      3. or with GZip: gzip -9 core.<PID>
   2. Submit the file core.<PID>.xz  (or core.<PID>.bz2  or core.<PID>.gz) to the location specified by the Genesys Customer Care.

Take a Memory Dump of the Running Genesys Pulse Collector Process on Windows

1. Make sure you have ProcDump utility. If not, complete following steps:
   1. Download the freeware SysInternals ProcDump utility from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd996900.aspx.
   2. Extract procdump.exe from the downloaded archive to C:\Windows
2. Open Windows Task Manager (by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc, or pressing Win+R and typing taskmgr in the Run > dialog.)
3. In the Windows Task Manager, make sure you have a column PID. If not:
   
   1. Choose the menu item View->Select Columns...
   2. Select PID (process identifier)
4. In the Windows Task Manager, click Show processes from all users
5. In the Windows Task manager, sort processes by process name and find appropriate collector.exe and note its PID
6. Open the command prompt
7. Change directory to where you store the dump (for example, cd /D  D:\MemoryDumps).
8. Type the following command: procdump -ma -o <PID> collector.<PID>.dmp  where <PID> is the process ID of Genesys Pulse Collector
9. The memory dump file is created: collector.<PID>.dmp.
10. If you need to submit this memory dump file to Genesys:
    1. Install freeware 7-Zip archiver of you don't already have it. You may download from this web site <a href="http://www.7-zip.org">www.7-zip.org</a> 
    2. Open folder where memory dump resides in the Windows Explorer.
    3. Right-click on the dump file and choose menu item  7-Zip->Add to archive...
    4. Adjust following parameters in the Add to Archive dialog: 
       1. Archive format: 7z
       2. Compression level: Ultra
       3. Compression method: LZMA
    5. Press OK and wait for compression to finish.
    6. Submit resulting file collector.<PID>.7z  to the location specified by the Genesys Technical Support.

Tune a Linux Operating System to Generate a Core Dump for the Genesys Pulse Collector in the Case it has Crashed

1. As superuser, edit the file /etc/abrt/abrt.conf , set parameter MaxCrashReportsSize to value 0.

2. As superuser, edit file  /etc/abrt/abrt-action-save-package-data.conf , set parameter ProcessUnpackaged to value yes.

3. Restart abrtd service: sudo service abrtd restart  
4. Now Genesys Pulse Collector crash dumps will appear in the folder /var/spool/abrt or other folder, as configured in the /etc/abrt/abrt.conf .
5. If you need to submit this core dump file to Genesys:
   
   1. Locate directory with necessary crash data (named like ccpp-YYYY-MM-DD-HH:MM:SS-PID ) in the folder  /var/spool/abrt  (or other directory, as configured in the  /etc/abrt/abrt.conf ). You are interested to provide Genesys with archive of the file called coredump located in that directory.
   2. Compress it (XZ or BZip2 are strongly recommended, as long as they give better compression ratio) - note that you must do that as superuser, because abrtd dump directory is typically not accessible to normal users: 
      1. with XZ: sudo xz -c -6 /var/spool/abrt/ ccpp-YYYY-MM-DD-HH:MM:SS-PID/ coredump >coredump.<PID>.xz
      2. or with BZip2:  sudo bzip2 -c -9 /var/spool/abrt/ ccpp-YYYY-MM-DD-HH:MM:SS-PID/ coredump >coredump.<PID>.bz2
      3. or with GZip:  sudo gzip -c -9 /var/spool/abrt/ ccpp-YYYY-MM-DD-HH:MM:SS-PID/ coredump >coredump.<PID>.gz 
   3. Change ownership of the resulting archive file so that you can access it with your regular user: sudo chown your-user-name:your-default-group coredump.<PID>.<Archiever-Specific-Suffix>
   4. Submit resulting file  coredump.<PID>.xz  (or  coredump.<PID>.bz2  or  coredump.<PID>.gz ) to the location specified by the Genesys Technical Support.

Tune Windows Operating System to Generate a Crash Dump for the Genesys Pulse Collector in the Case it has Crashed

1. Open Notepad text editor

2. Enter there below text, replacing value of the DumpFolder parameter with real path where you want to store Genesys Pulse Collector crash dumps. IMPORTANT NOTES: Directory path must be quoted and each directory separator (backslash) should be placed twice. Example: "C:\\CrashDumps\\PulseCollector". 

           Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 
   
           [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting]\
           "Disabled"=dword:0
           
           [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\collector.exe]
           "DumpFolder"="<path to folder where you store Genesys Pulse Collector dumps>"
           "DumpCount"=dword:10
           "DumpType"=dword:2

3. Save this file as collector-wer.reg .  
4. Double click on it in the Windows Explorer and say yes to question of Windows Registry Editor to add data to Registry.
5. Now, if Genesys Pulse Collector crashes, full memory dump of Genesys Pulse Collector will appear in the specified folder.
6. If you need to submit this memory dump file to Genesys:
   1. Install freeware 7-Zip archiver of you don't already have it. You may download from this web site <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">www.7-zip.org</a> 
   2. Open folder where memory dump resides in the Windows Explorer.
   3. Right-click on the dump file and choose menu item  7-Zip->Add to archive...
   4. Adjust following parameters in the Add to Archive dialog: 
      1. Archive format: 7z
      2. Compression level: Ultra
      3. Compression method: LZMA
   5. Click OK and wait for compression to finish.
   6. Submit resulting 7-Zip archive file to the location specified by the Genesys Customer Care.

Suggested Additional Reading

1. WER Settings (Windows) https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb513638(v=vs.85).aspx
2. core - coredump file http://linux.die.net/man/5/core
3. limits.conf - configuration file for the pam_limits module http://linux.die.net/man/5/limits.conf
4. bash ulimit command in the bash man page http://linux.die.net/man/1/bash