PP-758: Add pbs_snapshot tool to capture state & logs from PBS

Last updated: Jun 04, 2019

7 min read

Target release	17.1.1
Epic	PP-758 - Getting issue details... STATUS
Document status	COMPLETE
Forum Discussion/Review	http://community.pbspro.org/t/pp-758-add-pbs-snapshot-tool-to-capture-state-logs-from-pbs/520/22
Document owner	Ravi Agrawal (Deactivated)
Designer	Ravi Agrawal (Deactivated)
Developers	Ravi Agrawal (Deactivated)
QA

Introduction:

This tool is meant to replace the 'pbs_diag' script which is currently the means to capture data from PBS for diagnostics.

"pbs_snapshot" will be written in Python and will make use of PTL libraries to interact with the PBS system that it is capturing. This will mean that any major changes to PBS will need very minor (if any) refactoring of pbs_snapshot as PTL gets updated in tandem with PBS now, so pbs_snapshot will automatically work with the latest version of PBSPro.

Also, a new set of utilities (PBSSnapUtils) will be added to PTL itself for this tool, which will be directly available for PTL test writers and developers to write PTL tests/debugging tools which may need the ability to take snapshots of PBS.

The first version of the tool will also come with the ability to anonymize/obfuscate PBS data to enable users with sensitive data to obfuscate and share snapshots for bug reporting and debugging.

Shape and Form of a 'snapshot':

A 'snapshot', which will be the output produced by the pbs_snapshot tool, will be a tarball (.tgz file) named as "snapshot_<timestamp>.tgz" containing the following directory structure & files:

server/
- qstat_B.out: output of "qstat -B"
- qstat_Bf.out: output of "qstat -Bf"
- qmgr_ps.out: output of "qmgr print server"
- qstat_Q.out: output of "qstat -Q"
- qstat_Qf.out: output of "qstat -Qf"
- qmgr_pr.out: output of "qmgr print resource"
- qmgr_pq.out: output of "qmgr print queue @default"
server_priv/: a copy of the 'server_priv' directory inside PBS_HOME, core files are captured separately (see core_file_bt/)
- accounting/: contains accounting logs from PBS_HOME/server_priv/accounting/ directory for the number of days specified by --accounting-logs option
server_logs/ : contains server logs from the PBS_HOME/server_logs directory for the number of days specified by --daemon-logs option
job/
- qstat.out: output of "qstat"
- qstat_f.out: output of "qstat -f"
- qstat_t.out: output of "qstat -t"
- qstat_tf.out: output of "qstat -tf"
- qstat_x.out: output of "qstat -x"
- qstat_xf.out: output of "qstat -xf"
- qstat_ns.out: output of "qstat -ns"
- qstat_fx_F_dsv.out: output of "qstat -fx -F dsv"
- qstat_f_F_dsv.out: output of "qstat -f -F dsv"
- qstat_f_F_json.out: output of qstat -f -F json"
node/
- pbsnodes_va.out: output of "pbsnodes -va"
- pbsnodes_a.out: output of "pbsnodes -a"
- pbsnodes_avSj.out: output of "pbsnodes -avSj"
- pbsnodes_aSj.out: output of "pbsnodes -aSj"
- pbsnodes_avS.out: output of "pbsnodes -avS"
- pbsnodes_aS.out: output of "pbsnodes -aS"
- pbsnodes_aFdsv.out: output of "pbsnodes -aFdsv"
- pbsnodes_avFdsv.out: output of "pbsnodes -avFdsv"
- pbsnodes_avFjson.out: output of "pbsnodes -avFjson"
- qmgr_pn_default.out: output of "qmgr print node @default"
mom_priv/: a copy of the 'mom_priv' directory inside PBS_HOME, core files are captured separately (see core_file_bt/)
mom_logs/: contains mom logs from the PBS_HOME/mom_logs directory for the number of days specified by --daemon-logs option
comm_logs/: contains comm logs from the PBS_HOME/comm_logs directory for the number of days specified by --daemon-logs option
sched_priv/: a copy of the 'sched_priv' directory inside PBS_HOME with all the files, core files are not captured (see core_file_bt/).
sched_logs/: contains scheduler logs from the PBS_HOME/sched_logs directory for the number of days specified by --daemon-logs option
reservation/
- pbs_rstat_f.out: output of "pbs_rstat -f"
- pbs_rstat.out: output of "pbs_rstat"
scheduler/
- qmgr_lsched.out: output of "qmgr list sched"
- qmgr_psched.out: output of "qmgr print sched"
hook/
- qmgr_ph_default.out: output of "qmgr print hook @default"
- qmgr_lpbshook.out: output of "qmgr list pbshook"
datastore/
- pg_log/: a copy of the "PBS_HOME/datastore/pg_log" directory for the number of days specified by --daemon-logs option
core_file_bt/ (stack backtrace from core files)

sched_priv/: files containing the output of "thread apply all backtrace full" on all core files captured from PBS_HOME/sched_priv
server_priv/: files containing the output of "thread apply all backtrace full" on all core files captured from PBS_HOME/server_priv
mom_priv/: files containing the output of "thread apply all backtrace full" on all core files captured from PBS_HOME/mom_priv
misc/: files containing the output of "thread apply all backtrace full" on any other core files found inside PBS_HOME

system/
- pbs_probe_v.out: output of "pbs_probe -v"
- pbs_hostn_v.out: output of "pbs_hostn -v $(hostname)"
- pbs_environment: copy of PBS_HOME/pbs_environment file
- os_info: Information about the OS
- process_info: List of processes running on the system when the snapshot was taken (output of "ps -aux | grep [p]bs" on linux systems and "tasklist /v" on windows systems)
- ps_leaf.out: output of ps -leaf, only on linux systems
- lsof_pbs.out: output of "lsof | grep [p]bs", only on linux systems
- etc_hosts: Copy of "/etc/hosts" file, only on linux systems.
- etc_nsswitch_conf: Copy of "/etc/nsswitch.conf" file, only on linux systems.
- vmstat.out: Output of the command 'vmstat', only on linux systems.
- df_h.out: Output of the command 'df -h', only on linux systems.
- dmesg.out: Output of the 'dmesg' command, only on linux systems.
pbs.conf: a copy of the pbs.conf file for the PBS system
ctime: this will log the time (since epoch) when the snapshot was taken.
pbs_snapshot.log: captures the logs generated by pbs_snapshot.

Interface Documentation:

The interface for pbs_snapshot will be as follows (output of pbs_snapshot --help):

Usage: pbs_snapshot -o <path to existing output directory> [OPTION]

    Take snapshot of a PBS system and optionally capture logs for diagnostics

    -H <hostname>                     primary hostname to operate on
                                      Defaults to local host
    -l <loglevel>                     set log level to one of INFO, INFOCLI,
                                      INFOCLI2, DEBUG, DEBUG2, WARNING, ERROR
                                      or FATAL
    -h, --help                        display this usage message
    --daemon-logs=<num days>          number of daemon logs to collect
    --accounting-logs=<num days>      number of accounting logs to collect
    --additional-hosts=<hostname>     collect data from additional hosts
                                      'hostname' is a comma separated list
    --map=<file>                      file to store the map of obfuscated data
    --obfuscate                       obfuscates sensitive data
    --with-sudo                       Uses sudo to capture privileged data
    --version                         print version number and exit

Caveat - Currently pbs_snapshot will need to be run as root because it needs to access protected PBS information (e.g - information inside the PBS_HOME/ _priv directories). So, it could either be run with sudo, or as root user. If it is run with restricted privileges, it won't be able to query all of the data.

Interface: Option -o <path to target directory>

Synopsis: Path to the directory where the snapshot tarball will be generated
Details:
- This is a mandatory option to pbs_snapshot.
- The target directory must exist.
- As an example, if -o is passed "/temp", then path to the generated snapshot would be "/temp/snapshot_<timestamp>.tgz"

Interface: Option -H <hostname>

Synopsis: Option to provide the hostname to PBS server
Details:
- This option will make pbs_snapshot ignore the value of PBS_SERVER and instead use the one provided.

Interface: Option -l <loglevel>

Synopsis: Option to set the desired log level for debugging pbs_snapshot
Details:
- The <loglevel> can be set to INFO, INFOCLI, INFOCLI2, DEBUG, DEBUG2, WARNING, ERROR or FATAL.
- The logging becomes more comprehensive going from FATAL to INFO.
- By default, the log level will be set to INFOCLI2.
- The generated logs will also be written out in the file 'pbs_snapshot.log' inside the snapshot directory.

Interface: Option --daemon-logs=<num days>

Synopsis: Option to instruct pbs_snapshot to capture daemon logs for the given number of days going back from the current day
Details:
- This will capture all the daemons' logs available on the host that's running PBS Server.
- If this option is not specified, a default of 5 days of logs will be collected.
- The value of <num days> should be >= 0.
  - If the value is 0, no logs are captured.
  - If the value is 1, only the logs for the current day are captured.

Interface: Option --accounting-logs=<num days>

Synopsis: Option to instruct pbs_snapshot to capture accounting logs for the given number of days going back from the current day
Details:
- If this option is not specified, a default of 30 days of accounting logs will be collected.
- The value of <num days> should be >= 0.
  - If the value is 0, no logs are captured.
  - If the value is 1, only the logs for the current day are captured.

Interface: Option --additional_hosts=<hostname>

Synopsis: Option to capture information from hosts other than the one where PBS Server is running
Details:
- This option only works if daemon logs are being captured (i.e:- if --daemon-logs=0, then this option will not cause any effect).
- This option will cause pbs_snapshot to capture the following information:
  - mom and comm logs from the hosts specified, for the number of days of logs being captured.
  - mom_priv from the hosts specified, if present.
  - system information from the hosts specified.
- The 'hostname' argument could either be a single hostname value, or a comma separated list of hostnames to capture the logs from.
- Warning: This can bloat the size of snapshot by a lot and cause pbs_snapshot to take a lot of time copying possibly large amount of data over the network.

Interface: Option --map=<file>

Synopsis: Option to generate a map file by the name specified for obfuscated data
Details:
- This option will cause pbs_snapshot to create a map file by the name specified with "key:value" pair mapping of the data that's obfuscated.
- This option will work only with the --obfuscate option.
- If this option is not specified, a file called "obfuscate.map" will be created by default at the location specified by the -o option.

Interface: Option --obfuscate

Synopsis: Option to obfuscate/anonymize the PBS data captured
Details:
- This option will instruct pbs_snapshot to obfuscate euser, egroup, project, Account_Name, operators, managers, group_list, Mail_Users, User_List, server_host, acl_groups, acl_users, acl_resv_groups, acl_resv_users, sched_host, acl_resv_hosts, acl_hosts, Job_Owner, exec_host, Host, Mom, resources_available.host and resources_available.vnode.
- It will also delete Variable_List, Error_Path, Output_Path, mail_from, Job_Name, jobdir, Submit_arguments, Shell_Path_List.

Interface: Option --version

Synopsis: Option to display the version of pbs_snapshot being used
Details:
- This will just display the version and exit
- The versions would display the version of PBSPro

Sample Usage:

pbs_snapshot -o /tmp: Will capture a snapshot inside /temp/snapshot_<timestamp>.tgz along with 30 days of accounting logs and 5 days of daemon logs from the machine that's running PBS Server
pbs_snapshot --daemon-logs=1 --accounting-logs=1 -o /tmp --obfuscate --map=mapfile.txt: Will capture a snapshot inside /temp/snapshot_<timestamp>.tgz along with 1 day of accounting and daemon logs, will obfuscate the data and store data mapping in the map file named 'mapfile.txt'.