Log Collection: Collecting logs of the whole installation process

The ability to collect logs during the installation (diskful and diskless) can be enabled by setting the “site.xcatdebugmode” to different levels (0,1,2), which is quite helpful when debugging installation problems.

The diskful provision logs:

xcatdebugmode		0			1			2
OS Distribution		RHEL	SLES	UBT	RHEL	SLES	UBT	RHEL	SLES	UBT
Pre-Install logs	MN	N			N			N
	CN	C1			C1 C2			C1 C2
Installer logs	MN	N	N	N	M1	M1	M1	M1	M1	M1
	CN	C3	C3	C3	C3	C3	C3	C3	C3	C3
Post-Install logs	MN	M2			M3			M3
	CN	C1			C1 C2			C1 C2
PostBootScript logs	MN	M2			M3			M3
	CN	C1			C1 C2			C1 C2

The diskless provision logs:

xcatdebugmode		0			1			2
OS Distribution		RHEL	SLES	UBT	RHEL	SLES	UBT	RHEL	SLES	UBT
Provision logs	MN	N			M3			M3
	CN	N			N			N
PostBootScript logs	MN	M3			M3 M4			M3 M4
	CN	C1			C1 C2			C1 C2

• Pre-Install logs: the logs of pre-installation scripts, including:
  • %pre section in anaconda,
  • <pre-scripts/> section for SUSE and partman/early_command and preseed/early_command sections for ubuntu.
  • STDOUT and STDERR of the scripts
  • debug trace output of bash scripts with set -x
• Installer logs: the logs from the os installer itself, i.e, the logs of installation program (anaconda, autoyast and preseed,etc.)
• Post-Install logs: the logs of post-installation scripts, including
  • %post section in anaconda,
  • <chroot-scripts/> and <post-scripts/> sections for SUSE and preseed/late_command section for ubuntu.
  • STDOUT and STDERR of the scripts
  • debug trace output of bash scripts with set -x
• Provision logs: the logs during the diskless provision.
• PostBootScript logs: the logs during the post boot scripts execution, which are specified in postbootscripts attribute of node and osimage definition and run during the 1st reboot after installation.

MN: the logs forwarded to management node:

• M1: the installer logs will be forwarded to the MN in /var/log/xcat/computes.log file.
• M2: the error messages will be forwarded to /var/log/xcat/computes.log file on MN only when critical error happens.
• M3: the installation logs will be forwarded to /var/log/xcat/computes.log file on MN.
• M4: the debug trace(set -x or -o xtrace) of bash scripts enabled.
• N: the logs will not be forwarded to MN.

CN: the logs on compute node:

• C1 - the installation logs will be saved to /var/log/xcat/xcat.log file on CN.
• C2 - the debug trace(set -x or -o xtrace) of bash scripts enabled.
• C3 - the installer logs will be saved to the CN in /var/log/anaconda for RHEL, /var/log/YaST2 for SLES, /var/log/installer for UBT.
• N - the logs will not be saved to CN.