Logging and debugging for installation toolkit

The installation toolkit reports progress to the console, and certain options also log output to a file.

Console output

The installation toolkit reports progress to the console. By default, only information level messages are displayed. If you need more verbose output, pass the -v flag to the spectrumscale command.

Note: This flag must be the first argument passed to the spectrumscale command. For example:
./spectrumscale -v install --precheck

Log files

In addition to console output, the install and deploy functions of the installation toolkit log verbose output to the logs subdirectory of the installation toolkit: /usr/lpp/mmfs/x.x.x.x/ansible-toolkit/logs

The full log path is also displayed on the console when logging begins. The log file contains verbose output even if the -v flag is not specified on the command line.

Installation and deployment checks

The install and deploy functions have a set of checks performed before and after their main action. These checks can be triggered separately by using either the --precheck or --postcheck flag.

It is safe to run the pre- and post-checks multiple times, because during these checks cluster data is obtained but no changes are done.

Note: As with the full install and deploy functions, the pre- and post-checks create a detailed log file that can be used to provide further details about errors encountered.

Gathering support information

If an unresolvable error is encountered when using the installation toolkit, a support package can be gathered by using the installer.snap.py script that is available in the same directory as the installation toolkit.

Note: The installer.snap.py script must be run from the installation toolkit directory.

The installer.snap.py script gathers information from each of the nodes defined in the configuration and packages it such that it is ready for submission to the IBM® Support Center. It creates a tar file with the prefix installer_snap in the /tmp directory.

The script gathers the following information:

  • Cluster configuration file
  • installation toolkit logs
  • Information from the local node of the protocol services
  • A GPFS snap file from each node defined in the configuration
  • Basic environment information from the local node including:
    • Current OS and kernel version
    • System message log (dmesg)
    • File system usage
    • Network configuration
    • Current processes

Collection of core dump data

For information about changing configuration to enable collection of core dump data from protocol nodes, see Configuration changes required on protocol nodes to collect core dump data.