How to troubleshoot the Fast Data Masker (FDM) UI

Products

• CA Test Data Manager (Data Finder / Grid Tools)

Issue/Introduction

This document highlights the various approaches that can be used to troubleshooting the Fast Data Masker (FDM) User Interface.

This information is helpful, when the FDM UI fails to launch, or if the FDM becomes unresponsive, and nothing is showing up in the FDM debug logs. 

Environment

All supported FDM releases.

Resolution

Anytime the FDM UI is behaving in an unexpected manner, fails to launch, or hangs/crashes, launching the FDM application from a command line might help gather information that does not show up in the normal FDM logs, or debug logs. This is because not all Windows system errors, or Java runtime error are passed to the FDM log.

Prerequisites: Please exit out of the FDM application before starting.

To launch the FDM UI from a command line:

1. Open a Windows File explorer and navigate to the FDM installation directory. By default, this is in the C:\Program Files\Grid-Tools\FastDataMasker directory
   
   
2. Open a command prompt by typing 'cmd' in front of the file path and hit 'Enter' on the keyboard.
   
   
   
   
3.  From the Windows command line terminal, enter the following command:
   • jre\bin\java.exe -cp "GTMapper.exe;lib/*" com.gridtools.products.sdmmapper.MapperFrame
     
     
     
     This will launch the FDM application, and record the output to the terminal window.
     
     Note: to redirect the output to a log file, run the following command instead:
     jre\bin\java.exe -cp "GTMapper.exe;lib/*" com.gridtools.products.sdmmapper.MapperFrame > %TEMP%\fdm.log 2>&1
     
     This will redirect the output to be written to a file, named fdm.log inside the %TEMP% directory. After recreating the issue, you can simply analyze the fdm.log for any errors, or open a support case and provide a copy of the fdm.log for Support to analyze.
     
     
4. Select a database profile and click the 'Connect' button.
   
   
   
   
5. With the command prompt still open, recreate the issue you are experiencing.
   
   
6. You should see a stack trace output appear in the command prompt.
   
   
7. If you do not know how to fix the issue after analyzing the stack trace, then please record (copy) this information, and send it to support.
   The following steps will tell you how to accomplish this.
   
   
   
   
   1. At the top of the command prompt window, right-click, select 'Edit' from the list.
      
      
   2. Click on the 'Mark' option.
      
      

      

   3. Highlight the text in the command prompt.
      
      
   4. Select all the text and hit 'Enter' on your keyboard.
      Now the information has been copied to your clipboard.
      
      
   5. Paste the text into a program like 'Notepad++'.
      
      

      

   6. Save the text file, and attach the file to the support case.

Additional Information

In some use cases, it might be helpful to also get a Microsoft Sysinternals Process Monitor trace, in order to get more details about what the Windows Operating System is doing.

• SysInternals Process Monitor (ProcMon) is available for download from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon.
  
  
• Once ProcMon has been downloaded, simply unzip it in the directory of your choice. There's no installation required, just run the executable.
  
  
• The first time ProcMon is launched, you might see a capture running. Stop and clear the capture.
  
  
• Configure the following filter: Path contains C:\Program Files\Grid-Tools\FastDataMasker
  
  
• Restart the ProcMon capture, and launch the FDM application to recreate the issue. If you need help analyzing the ProcMon capture, save it to a file, and upload it to the Broadcom Support case.