NAME

plclog - Qualcomm Atheros Log Retrieval Utility

SYNOPSIS

plclog [options] [device] [device] [...] [>stdout]

DESCRIPTION

Read and print the device watchdog and checkpoint report on stdout for subsequent analysis by Atheros Technical Support. Report output is in XML format and contains base-64 encoded binary data returned by the device. Aside from the XML tags, output is not in human readable format.

This program is part of the Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit. See the AMP man page for an overview and installation instructions.

OPTIONS

-c

Specify custom watchdog report.

-C

Clear the report after reading.

-e

Redirects stderr messages to stdout. By convention status and error messages are printed on stderr while primary program output is printed on stdout. This option prints all output on stdout in cases where this is desired.

-x

Print the report in XML format. The default is raw (or binary) format.

-i interface

Select the host Ethernet interface. All requests are sent via this host interface and only reponses received via this host interface are recognized. The default interface is eth1 because most people use eth0 as their principle network connection; however, if environment string "PLC" is defined then it takes precedence over the default interface. This option then takes precedence over either default.

-q

Suppresses status messages on stderr.

-v

Print additional information on stdout. In particular, this option dumps incoming and outgoing packets which can be saved as text files for reference.

-?,--help

Print program help summary on stdout. This option takes precedence over other options on the command line.

-?,--version

Print program version information on stdout. This option takes precedence over other options on the command line. Use this option when sending screen dumps to Atheros Technical Support so that they know exactly which version of the Linux Toolkit you are using.

ARGUMENTS

device

The MAC address of some powerline device. More than one address may be specified. If more than one address is specified then operations are performed on each device in turn. The default address is local. See DEVICES for information about symbolic device addresses.

LOGFILES

Log files are save in binary format by default but they can also be saved in XML format by adding option -x to the command line. By convention, binary log files have a .log extension and XML log files have a .xlog extension. The extension is not critical but it helps us determine the format before we open the file.

DEVICES

Powerline devices use Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) addresses. MAC addresses are 12 hexadecimal digits (0123456789ABCDEFabcdef) in upper, lower or mixed case. Individual octets may be separated by colons, for clarity, but not all octets need to be seperated. For example, "00b052000001", "00:b0:52:00:00:01" and "00b052:000001" are valid and equivalent.

The following MAC addresses are special and may be expressed by name instead of number.

all

Equivalent to "broadcast", described next.

broadcast

A synonym for the standard Ethernet broadcast address, FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. All devices, whether local, remote or foreign will respond to this address.

local

A synonym for the Qualcomm Atheros vendor specific Local Management Address (LMA), 00:B0:52:00:00:01. All local Atheros devices will recognize this address but remote and foreign devices will not. A remote device is any device at the far end of a powerline connection. A foreign device is any device not manufactured by Atheros.

REFERENCES

See the Qualcomm Atheros HomePlug AV Firmware Technical Reference Manual for more information.

DISCLAIMER

Atheros HomePlug AV Vendor Specific Management Message structure and content is proprietary to Atheros Communications, Ocala FL USA. Consequently, public information is not available. Atheros Communications reserves the right to modify message structure or content in future firmware releases without any obligation to notify or compensate users of this program.

EXAMPLES

The following example reads the Watchdog and Checkpoint Report from device 00:B0:52:BA:BE:02 and prints them on stdout in XML format. The output contains data segments formatted in base-64 notation which preserved data integrity when read or transmitted in text format.

# plclog 00:B0:52:BA:BE:02

The next example does the same thing but pipes output to file temp.log. Atheros recommends using a .log extension for compatibility with the WIndows Device Manager.

# plclog 00:B0:52:BA:BE:02 > temp.log

SEE ALSO

amp(1), plctool(1)

CREDITS

Charles Maier