Submitting Diagnostic Info to Support

last updated on December 30, 2022

When working with support, there may be times when more advanced diagnostic data needs to be shared in order to review what the root cause of an issue could be.

The ffdiag program is designed to easily allow you to upload data back to support in a safe, secure, and easy manner.

Installing ffdiag

The ffdiag tool will be installed automatically for instances at version 2106.05 or later.

If you are looking to install ffdiag before 2106.05 please run the following commands as root

yum makecache fast && yum install --enablerepo sme-enterprise sme-ffdiag -y 

Running ffdiag

When working with support, if required to gather diagnostic logs they will give you the command to run as root for ffdiag which will include the link to the upload url as well as a password.

For example:

ffdiag -s 'password' -u "https://support.sme.io/folder/1234567890"

Here '-u' indicates that the link is a Access Anywhere Drop Folder link and '-s' indicates that the following value is the secret password for the link.

Special Characters in Passwords

ffdiag supports the use of special characters in the passwords. To support this we will use single quoted strings to ensure any linux special characters are seen as part of the password. for example

ffdiag -s 'p@$$w0rd' ...

Using the “ will cause an issue with those special characters.

Additional ffdiag options

The standard ffdiag command can be run with just the -u (url) -s (secret password) to upload data.

But Nasuni Support may request additional flags to gather more fine grained details as well. For reference here are the flags and what they will do:

-a

URL is an AWS link. (Compare with -u', which indicates that a Access Anywhere link is being used.)

Apply Debug Filters and Wait

-d

For example:

ffdiag -s 'password' -u "https://support.sme.io/folder/1234567890" -d "s3"

The -d flag allows custom debug filters to run, which allow for advanced levels of logging for specific functions of the server. When running with the -d command the debug filters will be put in place while you go back to Access Anywhere to reproduce the error. Once you have reproduced the error hit <enter> to continue. After gathering the advanced logs, ffdiag will remove the debug filter to ensure the advanced logging doesn't continue.

Upload Extra Files

-f

the -f flag can be used to upload extra files. It supports multiple files and wildcard (glob) options, for example:

ffdiag -s 'password' -u "https://support.sme.io/folder/1234567890" -f "/var/tmp/test/test*","/var/tmp/tcpdump.pcap","/tmp/*"

Include Archived Logs

-l

For example:

ffdiag -s 'password' -u "https://support.sme.io/folder/1234567890" -l 3

By default, ffdiag will only upload the current day's logs. For issues that may be recurring, support may ask you to run with the -l flag to get previous days logs as well. ( -l int Number of days back of old Logs to gather - Default: 0)

Upload via HTTP Proxy

-p

For example:

ffdiag -s 'password' -u "https://support.sme.io/folder/1234567890" -p "http://proxy:8080"

By default the ffdiag script should attempt to use the system defined proxy to upload data back to support.

If you require a proxy and haven't defined one system wide, you would use the -p flag to specify the http proxy you would like to use to upload the diags.

Show ffdiag Version

-v

Wait for Input

-w

Allows you to reproduce issue while ffdiag is waiting. After you have taken the intended action, press <Enter> in the terminal where ffdiag is running and ffdiag will collect and upload the logs.