Support Data Collection¶

When troubleshooting issues or seeking support, the support command provides a convenient way to collect comprehensive system diagnostics. This command gathers configuration files, logs, network state, and other system information into a single compressed archive.

Note

The support collect command should be run with sudo to collect complete system information (kernel logs, hardware details, etc.). Use the --unprivileged option to run as a regular user in degraded data collection mode.

Collecting Support Data¶

To collect support data and save it to a file:

admin@host:~$ sudo support collect > support-data.tar.gz
Starting support data collection from host...
Collecting to: /var/lib/support
This may take up to a minute. Please wait...
Tailing /var/log/messages for 30 seconds (please wait)...
Log tail complete.
Collection complete. Creating archive...
admin@host:~$ ls -l support-data.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin 508362 nov 30 13:05 support-data.tar.gz

The command can also be run remotely via SSH from your workstation:

$ ssh admin@host 'sudo support collect' > support-data.tar.gz
...

The collection process may take up to a minute depending on system load and the amount of logging data. Progress messages are shown during the collection process.

Encrypted Collection¶

For secure transmission of support data, the archive can be encrypted with GPG using a password:

admin@host:~$ sudo support collect -p mypassword > support-data.tar.gz.gpg
Starting support data collection from host...
Collecting to: /var/lib/support
This may take up to a minute. Please wait...
...
Collection complete. Creating archive...
Encrypting with GPG...

The support collect command even supports omitting mypassword and will then prompt interactively for the password. This works over SSH too, but the local ssh client may then echo the password.

Tip

To hide the encryption password for an SSH session, the script supports reading from stdin: echo "$MYSECRET" | ssh user@device 'sudo support collect -p' > file.tar.gz.gpg

After transferring the resulting file to your workstation, decrypt it with the password:

$ gpg -d support-data.tar.gz.gpg > support-data.tar.gz
$ tar xzf support-data.tar.gz
...

or

$ gpg -d support-data.tar.gz.gpg | tar xz
...

Important

Make sure to share mypassword out-of-band from the encrypted data with the recipient of the data. I.e., avoid sending both in the same plain-text email for example.

What is Collected¶

The support archive includes:

System identification (hostname, uptime, kernel version)
Running and operational configuration (sysrepo datastores)
System logs (/var/log directory and live tail of messages log)
Network configuration and state (interfaces, routes, neighbors, bridges)
FRRouting information (OSPF, BFD status)
Container information (podman containers and their configuration)
System resource usage (CPU, memory, disk, processes)
Hardware information (PCI, USB devices, network interfaces)