Sunday, February 18, 2007

How do I enable Java tracing on a client machine?

When investigating issues related to SCORM courseware tracking, NetDimensions support staff might sometimes ask you to enable Java tracing on the client machine. Enabling Java tracing causes information about API calls made by the course to be written to a trace file on the client. The steps below describe how to enable Java logging when using Sun Microsystems' Java Runtime Environment (RTE).

  1. Open the Java Control Panel. (On Windows, this can be done by going to Start > Control Panel, and double-clicking the Java icon.)
  2. In the Java Control Panel window, click on the Advanced tab.
  3. On the Advanced tab, expand the Debugging item by clicking on the plus sign icon.
  4. Ensure the checkbox labeled Enable tracing is checked.
  5. Click OK.

By default, the trace file is written to the <user>\Sun\Java\Deployment\log directory on Windows. Sun Microsystems' web site has more information on Java tracing and logging.

Note that the information written to the log file is generally the same as is available in the Java console. However, unlike the console, the information in the log file is still available after a browser restart or browser crash.

No comments: