Enabling OpenBMC Debug

[Justin Thaler]

This is a really good set of information! I must say I think the 
obmcutil command is a good idea, for development purposes.

On 2/11/20 11:58 AM, Joseph Reynolds wrote:
> On 2/11/20 9:51 AM, Andrew Geissler wrote:
>> I find myself running a lot of different commands to enable a variety of
>> debug data on OpenBMC when debugging different issues (usually BIOS
>> communication issues). I also end up giving these commands to a lot of 
>> people
>> when recreating issues for me. Stuff like this:
>>
>> # enable debug logs in journal
>> sed -i 's/info/debug/' 
>> /lib/systemd/journald.conf.d/journald-maxlevel-policy.conf
>> systemctl restart systemd-journald.service
>>
>> # Enable BIOS communication service debug
>> sed -i 's/mboxd/mboxd -vv/' /lib/systemd/system/mboxd.service
>> sed -i 's/btbridged/btbridged --vv/' 
>> /lib/systemd/system/org.openbmc.HostIpmi.service
>> sed -i 's/ipmid/ipmid -d 0xff/'  
>> /lib/systemd/system/phosphor-ipmi-host.service
>> sed -i 's/0/1/' /etc/default/pldmd
>> systemctl daemon-reload
>> systemctl restart mboxd.service
>> systemctl restart org.openbmc.HostIpmi.service
>> systemctl restart phosphor-ipmi-host.service
>> systemctl restart pldmd.service
>>
>> I was contemplating wrapping the above stuff in a obmcutil command so 
>> instead
>> of telling people to do all of the above (and dealing with situations 
>> when
>> those commands change), I could say something like run "obmcutil 
>> debugon".
>>
What about a REST API command tied to this? It could help when dealing 
with external to BMC problems.

>> Any thoughts out there? Would finer granularity of the debug be useful?
>> Are there other forms of debug people would like enabled?
Sometimes we have to recreate issues that occur on a system, a rather 
unfortunate situation in and of itself. I'll have to counter with a 
question of my own. Do you think this would be good to enable during a 
recreate, and we don't risk flooding the useful info?


> 
> Thank you for the information.  I keep learning all the time.
> 
> These settings factor into service scenarios and also deployment 
> readiness.  For example:
> - I want to turn off debug.  For example, I want a debug-off command.
> - I would want a way to validate (or at least show) these settings when 
> testing firmware image release candidates.  For example, another 
> obmcutil command "debug-show" which uses "grep -H" instead of "sed".
> - I would want some documentation added the BMC administrator's guide to 
> make them aware of OpenBMC debug support.  Draft: The obmcutil command 
> can control debug settings for a variety of the components running on 
> the BMC.  For more information, see 
> https://github.com/openbmc/phosphor-state-manager/blob/master/obmcutil
> 
> The obmcutil tool is a shell script, so folks can take just the pieces 
> they need.  That is, don't be more granular at this time.
> 
> In summary, it seems like a good idea.  It seems like we should ask our 
> service architects to weight in.  I'll go ask mine....
> 
> - Joseph
> 
>>
>> Andrew
> 
Thanks,
Justin