Create a support package

Legacy 'nms' references Some commands, file paths, and configuration references still use nms due to the ongoing transition from NGINX Management Suite (NMS) to NGINX Instance Manager (NIM). These will be updated in future releases.

Overview

The support package script can be used to collect information about your system for troubleshooting and debugging issues.

The script collects system and service information and then packages the data into a tar archive, which you can share with NGINX Customer Support.

Usage

The F5 NGINX Instance Manager installer copies the support-package.sh script to the following location: /etc/nms/scripts/support-package.sh.

The supported shell is bash.

To create a support package:

  1. Run the support package script. The script requires root privileges to run.

    sudo bash /etc/nms/scripts/support-package.sh

    The support package is saved in the same location from where the script was run (if no -t argument is passed).

    (Optional) If you use a different Instance Manager config file than the default /etc/nms/nms.conf file, run the support package script with the -c flag and specify the path to your config file:

    sudo bash /etc/nms/scripts/support-package.sh -c /your/config.conf

  2. To extract the package, use the tar command:

    tar -xvf support-pkg-<timestamp>.tar.gz

Arguments

The following table lists the arguments you can use with the support package script.

Short Long Description Example Default
-h --help Prints information about the script arguments to stdout. --help N/A
-o --output_dir The output directory where the tar archive is saved. -o ~/output $(pwd)
-n --nginx_log_path The directory where the NGINX log files are located. -n /var/log/nginx /var/log/nginx
-c --nms_config_path The path to the Instance Manager config file. -c /etc/nms/nms.conf /etc/nms/nms.conf
-m --manager_log_path The directory where the Instance Manager log file is located. -m /var/log/nms /var/log/nms
-t --target_host The Instance Manager address (host:port). -t 127.0.0.1:443 127.0.0.1:443
-xd --exclude_databases Excludes database data from the support package. --exclude_databases N/A
-xt --exclude_timeseries Excludes timeseries data from the support package. --exclude_timeseries N/A

Package Contents

The support package includes several directories containing information about the system, service, and database state.

The information included is based on the NGINX products installed and configured.

nginx-logs

The access and error logs of the instances that Instance Manager monitors.

The access logs display the HTTP traffic for Instance Manager that’s routed by the NGINX instance. The error log contains NGINX errors that occurred during runtime.

nms-logs

The logs of the Instance Manager processes.

You can pipe the logs to grep to view entries belonging to only one of the three nms processes. For example, to view nms-core logs, run the following command:

cat nms.log | grep 'COR'

The following table shows the nms processes and pattern to grep on:

Process name Pattern
nms-core ‘COR’
nms-dpm ‘DPM’
nms-ingestion ‘ING’

service-information

Information about the Instance Manager and NGINX services running on the host. For each nms process and the nginx instance, the script collects:

  • journalctl (10000 most recent rows)
  • systemctl status

system-information

The status and state information of the host running Instance Manager, including the following:

  • System metrics (memory usage, CPU usage, etc.)
  • File permissions of the Instance Manager
  • Firewall or SELinux state
  • Network interfaces
  • Network information (hostname, iptables)
  • Environment variables
  • Disk usage of select directories
  • Operating system version
  • Installed Instance Manager version
  • Instance Manager license

dqlite snapshot

The support package script uses the -c flag ( or --nms_config_path) to get the Instance Manager configuration. If the configuration file is not specified, the script uses the default value /etc/nms/nms.conf.

If the Instance Manager configuration file does not specify addresses for the core and dpm databases, the default values are assumed: 127.0.0.1:7891 and 127.0.0.1:7890.

The support package script uses a small Go executable file called dqlite-backup (located in /etc/nms/scripts/) to connect to the databases and generate data dumps.

The collected data is saved to the directories dqlite/core, dqlite/dpm.

timeseries

This folder contains status information, dumps, and statistics for the nms ClickHouse database. In particular, for metrics and events.