The "Execution Details" page is a hinderance to troubleshooting issues

Jonathan.Engstrom

I am having issues troubleshooting executions of servers in Otter with this screen. It has 3 buttons that don't do anything. Why can't the information just be displayed? The "Set Execution Status" button does not do anything, and the other two buttons "View Log Text" and "Download Full Log" only open up another tab in Chrome to the same screen. This does nothing to assist with troubleshooting. Where or how can I troubleshoot these systems? Thanks!

Product: Otter
Version: 2.1.1

thoven

Are you actually on v2.1.1? This should have been fixed as part of OT-238 in 2.0.10

Jonathan.Engstrom

Yes, I am on 2.1.1. I usually upgrade within 48 hours of new release and a backup of previous DB.

Guest

Sometimes there is a rendering problem on the page; I've seen this a while back for some executions that weren't dispatched, and the page didn't know how to handle it. Can't remember when it was fixed.

That would be my guess; that it's crashing during rendering the page, and displaying bad data (empty buttons). In that case, try to gather more info about the state of the execution.

Jonathan.Engstrom

George, thanks for the reply. My point was being this page prevents one from finding out what issues are going on as it displays no relevant information. I am not sure where else I am going to find this information without digging in the SQL database, which I really don't want to do/ have time to do.

Jonathan.Engstrom

Is anyone else able to shed any insight as to why thins is doing this, or share with me an alternative method to finding these logs? I need to troubleshoot this issue, thanks!

jrasch

This will be resolved as part of: OT-274

The workaround is to browse to the URL directly, e.g .

http://{otter-host}/executions/logs?executionId={execId}&level=0&download={true/false}

Jonathan.Engstrom

John, thank you for that; that is very helpful. Is there a way to look up all of the executions that have happened for a server? I tried replacing the ExecutionID with a serverID, hoping it would list out all of the executions that have occurred for that server, but that didn't work :)

It would be awesome to have a tab on each server that listed out a complete history of all of the executions.

jrasch

Good idea, I thought we already had the ability to do that, but I was confusing it with Job History.

Here is the associated issue: OT-278

Jonathan.Engstrom

So I have noticed that there are 'empty' executions id's that are showing an error. When I use your url provided, after putting in some of the execution id's they show an empty page. If I populate it with another execution ID that has logs, it displays that normally, so I know I am doing it right. Ideas?

Jonathan.Engstrom

John, while on the subject of execution ID's and such, during the logging of a psensure, can we add the psensure key to the log so it always outputs what it is checking and validating? How it is now:

INFO : 2018-12-11 20:31:07Z - Configuration drift detected.
DEBUG: 2018-12-11 20:31:07Z - Adding to execution plan.
DEBUG: 2018-12-11 20:31:11Z - Collecting configuration...
DEBUG: 2018-12-11 20:31:11Z - Comparing configuration...
INFO : 2018-12-11 20:31:11Z - Configuration matches template.
DEBUG: 2018-12-11 20:31:14Z - Collecting configuration...
DEBUG: 2018-12-11 20:31:14Z - Comparing configuration...
INFO : 2018-12-11 20:31:14Z - Configuration matches template.

and so on. Maybe it could log something like "Collecting configuration <key>" and "<key> matches template". That way it would make each line meaningful and bring more value into keeping the logs. Eventually I would like to have a way to save a copy of the txt execution into servicenow so we have a record of it in change management system as well. The url you shared previously will help in doing that I think. This improvement would help as documentation for each change. Thanks!