Basic Commands for Synthetic

[xu_guo]

Summary

When an HTTP or Browser monitor fails on a Synthetic ActiveGate, the first step is always to verify whether the request works directly from the ActiveGate host. This article provides a set of troubleshooting commands and methods that help you identify connectivity, proxy, authentication, and timeout issues for both HTTP and Browser monitors.

Troubleshooting HTTP Monitor Failures

When an HTTP monitor fails on the ActiveGate, validate connectivity using curl directly on the host.

Test the Request from the ActiveGate

• No proxy:

  curl –vvv –i –k –L -H "User-Agent: DynatraceSynthetic/1.329" <url>

• Proxy:

  curl –vvv –i –k –L -H "User-Agent: DynatraceSynthetic/1.329" –x http(s)://proxyhost:proxyport –proxy-user username:password <url>

• With basic authentication

  Adjust the URL format:
  https://username:password@test.com
  

Troubleshooting HTTP Monitor Timeouts

HTTP monitors have a default timeout of 10 seconds.
If a monitor times out, verify whether the server responds within that window:

time curl –vvv –i –k –L -H "User-Agent: DynatraceSynthetic/1.329 <url>

 If required, add the proxy options from above.

Troubleshooting Browser Monitor (Clickpath) Issues

Browser monitors rely on Chromium-based execution. If a Browser monitor is failing (especially connection‑related errors), test the request directly from the ActiveGate.

Basic Browser Monitor curl Tests

Browser Monitor (ClickPath)

• No proxy:

  curl –vvv –i –k –L -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12A4345d Safari/600.1.4 RuxitSynthetic/1.0" <url>

• Proxy:

  curl –vvv –i –k –L -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12A4345d Safari/600.1.4 RuxitSynthetic/1.0" –x http(s)://proxyhost:proxyport –proxy-user username:password <url>

• With basic authentication

  Adjust the URL format:
  https://username:password@test.com

Testing Browser Monitor Executions with Chromium

When deeper troubleshooting is required, you can manually run Chromium with Synthetic extensions enabled.

 

Headless Chromium test (no GUI) — Private Synthetic Location

cd ~ export DISPLAY=:99; /opt/dynatrace/synthetic/browser --headless --screenshot https://<site-of-interest>

 

Full Example with Synthetic Extensions Enabled

cd ~ export DISPLAY=:99;  /opt/dynatrace/synthetic/browser --user-data-dir=/var/tmp/dynatrace/synthetic/cache/vuc_work_diagnostics --disk-cache-dir=/var/tmp/dynatrace/synthetic/cache/vuc_work_diagnostics_cache --disk-cache-size=104857600 --disable-popup-blocking --ssl-version-min=tls1 --test-type --ignore-certificate-errors --no-default-browser-check --no-first-run --disable-translate --disable-web-security --disable-background-networking --disable-plugins-discovery --dns-prefetch-disable --noerrdialogs --disable-default-apps --disable-desktop-notifications --disable-crl-sets --allow-outdated-plugins --always-authorize-plugins --disable-web-resources --silent-debugger-extension-api --disable-internal-flash --disable-bundled-ppapi-flash --disable-appcontainer --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.87 Safari/537.36 RuxitSynthetic/1.0 v87769033 t7840928177123288742" --load-extension=/opt/dynatrace/synthetic/vucontroller/playback/playbackengine,/opt/dynatrace/synthetic/vucontroller/playback/websocketextension --disable-extensions-except=/opt/dynatrace/synthetic/vucontroller/playback/playbackengine,/opt/dynatrace/synthetic/vucontroller/playback/websocketextension --window-size=1024,768 --window-position=100,100 --proxy-server="http=<proxy-host>:<proxy-port>;https=<proxy-host>:<proxy-port>;" --proxy-bypass-list="localhost;<list-of-coma-separated-hosts>;" --headless --screenshot http(s)://<site-of-interest>

With GUI (Private Synthetic Location)

Default path on Linux:

/usr/bin/chromium-browser 

Default path on Windows:

C:\Program Files\dynatrace\synthetic\Chrome-bin\chrome.exe

Launch the Chromium browser and test as you would interactively.

Testing on Windows (Raw Response)

Invoke-WebRequest -MaximumRedirection 10 -Uri "<url you are testing>" | Select-Object -Expand RawContent

What's Next

More commands can be found here: Firewall Constraints and allowlisting for Synthetic Monitoring. 

If none of the previous steps resolved the issue, open a chat or support ticket and provide

• a description of the problem
• a link to the affected monitor
• The troubleshooting steps you have already completed, along with the outcome of each one.

What to read next:

📖  Synthetic Troubleshooting Map

📖  Synthetic Browser Monitor Error Codes

📖  Set up a proxy for private synthetic monitoring

📖  Synthetic details for browser monitors 

📖  Useful Synthetic ActiveGate logs

[ChadTurner]

Great troubleshooting writeup @xu_guo