How to generate a sosreport in Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS 4.x with SSH access to nodes?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (RHOCP, OCP)
    • 4.x
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS)

Issue

  • How to generate sosreport in Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS 4.x?
  • How to generate sosreport for Red Hat OpenShift 4.x nodes?

  • Generating sosreport using rhel7/support-tools image fails with a traceback.

    [root@ip-1-1-1-1 ~]# podman run -it registry.access.redhat.com/rhel7/support-tools /usr/bin/bash

bash-4.2# sosreport 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/sosreport", line 19, in <module>
    main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sos/sosreport.py", line 1498, in main
    sos = SoSReport(args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sos/sosreport.py", line 360, in __init__
    self.policy = sos.policies.load(sysroot=self.opts.sysroot)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sos/policies/__init__.py", line 44, in load
    cache['policy'] = policy(sysroot=sysroot)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sos/policies/redhat.py", line 258, in __init__
    super(RHELPolicy, self).__init__(sysroot=sysroot)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sos/policies/redhat.py", line 58, in __init__
    sysroot = self._container_init()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sos/policies/redhat.py", line 153, in _container_init
    host_tmp_dir = os.path.abspath(self._host_sysroot + self._tmp_dir)
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'NoneType' and 'str'

Resolution

Important note: By design, OpenShift 4.x clusters are immutable and rely on Operators to apply cluster changes. In turn, this means that accessing the underlying nodes directly by SSH is not the recommended procedure. Additionally, the nodes will be tainted as accessed.
Therefore, whenever possible, generate a sosreport without using SSH, by spawning a debug pod directly from the oc command line. See How to generate SOSREPORT within OpenShift4 nodes without SSH for further information.

Only if it's not possible to generate a sosreport without SSH, connect to the OpenShift Container Platform 4.x node where a sosreport shall be generated via SSH. After that, become root and run the toolbox command:

$ ssh core@NODE # ssh with core user using ssh key specified in install-config.yaml
[core@node ~]$ sudo -i
[root@node ~]# toolbox 
Spawning a container 'toolbox-root' with image 'registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools'
Detected RUN label in the container image. Using that as the default...
Command: /proc/self/exe run -it --name toolbox-root --privileged --ipc=host --net=host --pid=host -e HOST=/host -e NAME=toolbox-root -e IMAGE=registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools:latest -v /run:/run -v /var/log:/var/log -v /etc/machine-id:/etc/machine-id -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime -v /:/host registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools:latest

Note: in disconnected environments, it's needed to have the registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools mirrored. If the image is already available, create a /root/.toolboxrc file within the node as follows before running toolbox:

$ vi /root/.toolboxrc
REGISTRY=private-registry.example.com:5000
IMAGE=rhel8/support-tools

The CLI is now attached to a new bash session within the container and one can execute sosreport:

[root@node ~]# sosreport -k crio.all=on -k crio.logs=on  -k podman.all=on -k podman.logs=on

This will generate the sosreport in /host/var/tmp directory on the container which maps to /var/tmp/ on the host.

Once the sosreport was created, run exit to exit from the container:

[root@node ~]# exit
[root@node ~]#

Root Cause

The toolbox command runs podman container runlabel run registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools, which is the replacement for atomic run registry.redhat.io/rhel7/support-tools from RHEL Atomic Host.

Diagnostic Steps

If toolbox does not start the debug container as expected, check for a user-created $HOME/.toolboxrc file that could be overriding the default values of the REGISTRY, IMAGE, or TOOLBOX_NAME options.
In disconnected environments, it will be needed to create that file to refer to the mirrored image.

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9 Comments

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Carsten Clasohm's picture Red Hat Active Contributor 126 points
6 June 2019 6:29 PM

Under Resolution, I would add a clarification to the second step. Otherwise it's not clear where to run the "toolbox" command, as OCP 4 nodes are usually not accessed through SSH.

"Connect to the OpenShift Container Platform 4.x node on which you want to generate the sosreport via SSH. Use toolbox to properly start the container."

Fabrizio Soppelsa's picture Red Hat Community Member 60 points
18 February 2020 1:57 PM

How to generate SOSREPORT within OpenShift4 nodes without SSH into them https://access.redhat.com/solutions/4387261

EDIT: Correct link to the external KB

AK Red Hat Pro 522 points
19 February 2020 4:53 PM

You pasted the same link as this KCS. Can you share the correct link? :)

AK Red Hat Pro 522 points
20 February 2020 5:41 PM

Edited the KCS

AK Active Contributor 257 points
25 August 2020 11:42 AM

Unfortunately this doesn't work for environments behind a proxy or disconnected environments. Trying the other method mentioned in the comments...

YL Red Hat Community Member 22 points
27 September 2020 12:00 PM

Hello

The disconnected env please follow the step

  1. On bastion machine or can access internet machine $ podman pull registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools

  2. save the image to tarball file $ podman save -o tools.tar 50b63c2aff8c

  3. send the image.tar file to coreos node $ scp tools.tar core@xxxx

  4. load the image $ podman load -i tools.tar

5 change the image tag $ podman tag 50b63c2aff8c registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools

  1. run toolbox, can collect the sosreport
KK Community Member 47 points
22 December 2020 5:04 PM

i ran this.. the sosreport is in the container FS.. once you leave its gone. how do you access the report. I tried to copy to /tmp.. but that too is in the container.

The CLI is now attached to a new bash session within the container and one can execute sosreport:

Sam Morris's picture Active Contributor 329 points
6 January 2021 5:10 PM

I noticed that the 'toolbox' command leaves behind a container each time it's run:

sh-4.4# toolbox
Trying to pull registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools...                                                                                                                                             
[...]
[root@ocp-test8-kvxvb-master-1 /]# exit

sh-4.4# podman ps -a
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE                                          COMMAND        CREATED        STATUS                    PORTS  NAMES                                                                                                            
25cbabd8b3bd  registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools:latest  /usr/bin/bash  9 minutes ago  Exited (0) 5 seconds ago         toolbox-

This can be cleaned up with 'podman rm toolbox-'.

(To be fair, this is mentioned in the output of 'toolbox --help').

MC Community Member 20 points
23 November 2021 11:48 AM

No description how to tranfer sosreport file to desktop. Did someone from RedHat noticed, that people are sometimes using documentation in hurry and under pressure?