Troubleshooting the CICS® Transaction Server agent

If the CICS® Transaction Server agent is not behaving as expected, you can investigate various aspects of its operation.

Before you begin

Confirm that the RITAGENT is enabled and configured to communicate with HCL® Quality Server on the appropriate host and port by viewing the Infrastructure Dashboard of HCL® Quality Server.

Ensure that you have done the following tasks:
  1. Created an IBM® CICS® Region in the logical view of Architecture School and bound it to an IBM® CICS® Server
  2. Selected the DPL on CICS Transaction Server check box in that server
  3. Provided the appropriate values for the server

After you start recording the CICS® region, check the recording rules and their content by clicking the Network icon in HCL® Quality Server, and expand the rule card to view the Details tab section.

About this task

The CICS® Transaction Server (TS) agent (RITAGENT) is a batch service in z/OS®. It must register itself with HCL® Quality Server and communicate with the CICS® exit programs.

In the normal case, the following message is shown in the RITAGENT JES log after the RITAGENT starts correctly:
+RITAGENT is running in intercepting status.

You can also view the agent status in the HCL® Quality Server Infrastructure Dashboard, https://RTCP_HOST:5443/RTCP/dashboards/infrastructure, where RTCP_HOST is the name of the system that is hosting HCL® Quality Server.

Procedure

Complete the following steps to check whether the CICS® Transaction Server agent is configured correctly and to send the logs to IBM® for support.
  1. Set the RITAGENT log level to trace level and restart the RITAGENT. Send the contents of the files that are identified as RITLOG01 and RITLOG02 in the RITAGENT JCL to IBM®.
  2. Check the RITLOG in the CICS® region JES log and send it to IBM®:
    1. Type a question mark (?) before the CICS® region JOB.
    2. Select RITLOG.
  3. Check the intrapartition transient data queue (TDQ):
    1. On the CICS® command line, enter RITQ.
      You should see no error messages or abend codes.
    2. Run the following command in the CICS® region:
      CECI READQ TD QUEUE(RITQ) INTO(&A)
      If there are no TDQ configuration issues, a QZERO message is displayed.
  4. Check with the system administrator to see if z/OS® outbound firewall rules are set up that prohibit the CICS® agent from connecting to the HCL OneTest™ API recording port. If so, complete the following steps:
    1. Set the recording port and CICS® stub server port in HCL OneTest™ API Library Manager. For more information, see Working with the Library Manager.
    2. Add the specific rules to allow z/OS® outbound HTTP to access those ports.