Introduction

Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) is an excellent command-line data collection tool that can aid troubleshooting / problem solving. The tool covers the majority of Oracle's vast product range, and its data collection capability is comprehensive. RDA collects data about

• the operating system and environment, including
• environment variable, kernel settings
• network
• o/s performance
• o/s patches
• and much more
• the Oracle Products installed, including
  
• patches
• logs and debug
  
• metrics
• configuration
  
• and much more
  

In effect, RDA can obtain a snapshot of an Oracle Product and its environment. Oracle Support encourages the use of RDA because it greatly reduces service request resolution time by minimizing the number of requests from Oracle Support for more information. RDA is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible; it does not modify systems in any way. It collects useful data for Oracle Support only and a security filter is provided if required.

Find and Use the Right RDA Profile

One problem of any tool / utility, which covers a large range of products, is knowing how to target it against only the products you wish to troubleshoot. RDA does not have a GUI. Nor does RDA have an intelligent mechanism for detecting and automatically collecting data only for those Oracle products installed. Instead, you have to tell RDA what to do.

There is a mind boggling large number of RDA data collection modules which you can configure RDA to use. It is easier, however, to setup RDA to use a "Profile". A profile consists of a list of data collection modules and predefined settings. As such profiles can be used to diagnose a problem with a particular product or combination of products.

How to run RDA with a profile?

( <rda> represents the command you selected to run RDA (for example, rda.pl, rda.cmd, rda.sh, and perl rda.pl).)

1. Use the embedded spreadsheet to find the RDA profile which is appropriate for your problem / chosen Oracle Fusion Middleware products.

2. Use the following command to perform the setup

<rda> -S -p <profile_name> 

3. Run the data collection

<rda>

Run the data collection. If you want to perform setup and run in one go, then use a command such as the following:

<rda> -vnSCRP -p <profile name>

For more information, refer to:

Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Profile Manual Pages [ID 391983.1]

Additional Hints / Tips:

1. Be careful! Profile names are case sensitive.

2. When profiles are not used, RDA considers all existing modules by default. For example, if you have downloaded RDA for the first time and run the command

<rda> -S

you will see prompts for every RDA collection module many of which will be of no interest to you. Also, you may, in your haste to work through all the questions, forget to say "Yes" to the collection of data that is pertinent to your particular problem or product. Profiles avoid such tedium and help ensure the right data is collected at the first time of asking.