How to capture a NMAS Client trace

  • 3331372
  • 19-Oct-2006
  • 21-Jun-2017

Environment

Novell Modular Authentication Service (NMAS)

Situation

How to capture a NMAS client trace
How to capture a NMAS client side trace
NMAS client trace
Universal Smart Card logging
Universal Smart Card Method trace
pcProx Method trace

Resolution

The NMAS Client trace can be used with most NMAS methods, and can be helpful debugging an NMAS Client authentication.
Note: Some methods have their own tracing, above and beyond the NMAS client trace option.

The following steps explain how to capture an NMAS Client and NMAS method trace.

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NMAS Client Trace using NMAS Client 3.2 (and greater)
  Included starting with:
Novell Client 4.91 SP2 for Windows XP/2000 and Novell Client 2 for Windows 7/8/2008R2

This version uses NCC.EXE to configure tracing. NCC stands for NMAS Client Configuration and is a command-line utility. 
On Windows you can open a command prompt by selecting Start | Run | and type "cmd".

NCC has a number of command options including:

ncc -h
 
displays help screen

ncc -i 
  displays client build/version information

     NMAS Client, Vista_x64
     version: 8.8.8.10
     build date: Nov 19, 2013

ncc -ta status=on mode=append file=C:\Users\myUser\nmclient.log
   Command to turn on tracing to a file and will append vs. overwrite.
   On Novell Client 2 platforms, this must be run as administrator.

ncc -ti
  
Displays tracing status/info:

   ==== Trace Info: ====
    status : on
    mode : append
    file : c:\Users\myUser\nmclient.log

ncc -tr
  
Disables any tracing configuration and stops tracing.
   Note: this will *not* flush all of the data to the log file.  To ensure all data is flushed, restart the machine being traced.

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NMAS Client Trace using NMAS Client 3.0
  Included starting with: Novell Client 4.91 - Feb '05

NMAS trace is not available in the NMAS 3.0 client.
NMAS Client tracing was reintroduced with NMAS Client 3.0.1 and greater.
Please see NMAS Client Trace using NMAS Client 3.2 above for instructions

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NMAS Client Trace using NMAS Client 2.7

  • Open the Novell Client Properties
  • Choose Location Profiles tab
  • select "Default" (or applicable Location) and select properties
  • Select properties once more
  • go to the NMAS tab and select the "Log NMAS Client Activity"
  • Select the "Log file" button and specify where the log file will be located. It recommend to put this file on the desktop and call it NMAS.LOG
  • Select ok.

Reboot your workstation after making these changes.

NOTE: These steps will only work with NMAS v2.x so if the Novell client version is 4.91 these steps will not work.

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Universal Smart Card Method Trace

Verify there is a folder called C:\temp on the workstation -- if there is not, create C:\temp.
To enable the Universal Smart Card trace, it is necessary to edit the Windows registry with the following:

  • Start
  • Run...
  • Regedit
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  • SOFTWARE
  • Novell
  • NMAS
  • MethodData
  • Universal SmartCard
  • create a new dword by:
    • Right Clicking Universal SmartCard
    • New
    • DWord Value
    • name the new DWord Value "Trace Enabled" and set the Value data to 1

This will create a file called univsc.log in the C:\temp directory

Reboot your workstation after making these changes.

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pcProx Method Trace

To enable the pcProx trace, it is necessary to edit the Windows registry with the following:

  • Start
  • Run...
  • Regedit
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  • SOFTWARE
  • Novell
  • NMAS
  • MethodData
  • PcProx
  • create the following two new dword values by Right Clicking | New | DWord Value | name the new DWord Value 
    • "debug" with  Value data to 1
    • "debugLog" with Value data set to 1

The folder C:\pcProxLog will be created, and will contain the generated log files.
.
***********************************************************************

To capture a NMAS Server trace see "How to capture a NMAS Server Trace - TID3815371"

Additional Information

Formerly known as TID# 10092531

Change Log

2014-Feb-20: KKlemm
  - added part that a restart of the client device may be needed to flush to disk
  - modified some layout for readability.
2017-June-21: KKlemm
  - slight font correction