Turning on the Mac Debugger

Sometimes it may be necessary for ActivTrak to collect logs to better diagnose and troubleshoot an issue you may be having.

In order to keep the agent lightweight and prevent performance issues, this debugger is disabled by default and must be enabled before it starts running.

To do this, you'll need to be logged in to an Admin-level user account on the Mac in question and open Terminal.

Open Terminal and type the following:

•    cd /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/
•    cd scthost.app/
•    cd Contents/
•    cd Resources/
•   pwd (this confirms we are in the correct location)
•   sudo vi log.properties 

You will now see the log.properties file open inside Terminal with the ability to modify it.

This opens the log.properties file inside Terminal with sudo access. To start typing, press " i " on your keyboard.

Change the three lines from WARN to TRACE.

Then, hit the escape key on your keyboard and type " :X " to save your changes.

The agent will now start running debugger logs showing everything it is doing and any errors that might have occurred.

A support engineer may ask you to provide them with these logs, which can be found in the /tmp/ folder.

To access this folder, open Finder and click on "Go > Go to Folder" and enter /tmp/.

This will open the containing folder. The file Support will need is called "agent_mac_log".

To disable the debugger, repeat the same steps but change the entries for "TRACE" back to "WARN".