Diagnosing IBM Websphere Service logs

The IBM service log
The IBM service log, referred to as the service log, is a binary file. It contains information written to System.out by the Application Server run time as well as special messages that contain extended service information. This extended service information has been useful to IBM WebSphere Service teams in solving complex problems. IBM has now created additional tools to decipher these binary service logs, such as the Log Analyzer in Application Server. However, it is best to solve as many problems as possible during the development phase, before deploying to a production Application Server environment.

The service logs (activity.log) are normally located at $WAS_HOME/Profiles/dmgr/logs & $WAS_HOME/Profile/Node/Logs

[was61@Profile01]$ pwd
/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/Profile01
[was61@Profile01]$ du -a | grep activity.log
724     ./dmgr/logs/activity.log
2052    ./Node/logs/activity.log

Using showlog to see contents of Service log (activity.log)
You can find the showlog tool inside the WebSphere/AppServer/bin folder. If you execute it without arguments it will print out help for that tool

[was61@Profile01]$ /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/bin/showlog ./dmgr/logs/activity.log | more
$LANG = en_GB
$CODESET = UTF-8
—————————————————————
ComponentId:     Application Server
ProcessId:       26053
ThreadId:        0000000a
ThreadName:      main
SourceId:        com.ibm.ws.management.AdminInitializer
ClassName:
MethodName:
Manufacturer:    IBM
Product:         WebSphere
Version:         Platform 6.1 [ND 6.1.0.31 cf311015.02]
ServerName:      Cell\_Manager\dmgr
TimeStamp:       2011-08-14 07:06:54.943000000
UnitOfWork:
Severity:        3
Category:        AUDIT
PrimaryMessage:  ADMN0015I: The administration service is initialized.
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