KBI 310162 Argent Log File Grows Past Specified Maximum Size

Version

All versions

Date

14 April 2009

Summary

Occasionally you may run into a situation where an Argent log file grows larger than the default value of 5 MB.

Technical Background

This can be caused by a variety of factors such as an anti-virus program or some other process that locks the affected Argent log file during the time that the Argent log file would normally rollover to create a new file.

If this happens, the Argent file will continue to grow and will no longer rollover to make a new file.

Resolution

To prevent this issue from occurring, always ensure that the entire Argent installation folder and all sub-folders are excluded from any anti-virus real-time scanning. Doing this is considered a best practice for applications such as Argent that make file updates on a regular basis.

If this issue has occurred, follow the below steps as needed so that the file can be renamed and recreated at a more appropriate size:

  1. Stop the Main Engine and Monitoring Engine for the appropriate products (Argent Guardian is shown in the below examples:

  2. Prior to stopping the above two engines, task manager will have processes such as those shown below running:

    After Stopping the Argent Supervising Engine and the Argent Monitoring Engine, the above processes highlighted in red should no longer be present.

    Note: It is also possible to see other child processes appear during normal operation. Some processes such as AMC_SharedPerf.exe or AMC_NonSharedPerf.exe are created and terminated dynamically to collect performance counter data. If these processes are still running after stopping your Main Engine or your Monitoring Engine they must be terminated before proceeding to the next step.

  3. Locate the offending log file that has grown too large and rename it as needed. If, for example, the AG_MONITOR_ENGINE_LOG.TXT had grown too large you could rename it as:

    AG_MONITOR_ENGINE_LOG_OLD.TXT

    Note: If you receive any message such as “Access Denied”, this indicates that some other process still has a lock on the log file. Use built-in Windows tools such as Computer Management to close any open sessions or files as needed.

  4. Re-start the appropriate Argent Engines as needed.

  5. Confirm that a new log file is created.