Troubleshooting Discovery

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If discovery in Skylar One (formerly SL1) is not working as you expected, you can try these troubleshooting steps to try to fix any problems. If problems persist, please contact ScienceLogic Customer Care.

To perform the troubleshooting steps in this section, you must be allowed root-level access to Skylar One appliances from a shell session.

Checking Network Security

Your network security and network configuration can prevent Skylar One from communicating with each device in your network. To ensure that discovery can access each device in your network, check the following:

  • To discover a device as a "pingable" device, Skylar One must be able to either:
  • Ping the device (access through ICMP).
  • Access at least one of the ports selected in the Discovery Control Panel page.

  • To discover a device as "manageable" (that is, the device supports SNMP), Skylar One must be able to access the UDP port defined in the working SNMP credential for that device.
  • On each DNS server(s) for your network, Skylar One must access UDP port 53.
  • If there are firewalls between the Data Collectors and devices to be monitored, make sure that the firewalls are configured to allow Skylar One access to those devices.

Debugging the Discovery Processes

When you debug a process, you tell Skylar One to use verbose logging for that process. You can then view the log file to view detailed log files. If discovery is not performing as you would expect, you might find it helpful to debug one or more of the discovery processes.

In general:

  • If Skylar One is not discovering one or more devices that you know exist, debug the process Discovery: Auto.
  • If Skylar One is discovering devices but not retrieving the appropriate information, debug the process Discovery: Detail.
  • If Skylar One is not aligning Dynamic Applications with devices during discovery, debug the process Discovery: Dynamic App.

ScienceLogic recommends that you enable the debug option only while troubleshooting a problem and that you immediately turn off debugging when you have completed troubleshooting. Don't leave the debug option enabled during normal operation of Skylar One. When you turn on debugging, Skylar One will run significantly more slowly.

To enable the debug option for a discovery process:

  1. Go to the Process Manager page (System > Settings > Admin Processes).
  2. In the Process Manager page, find the process you want to debug and click its wrench icon ().
  3. The Process Editor modal page appears.
  4. Edit the following field:
  • Debug Mode. Enables or disables debugging information for a process. Select Enabled.
  1. Click the Reset button.
  2. Go to the Discovery Control Panel page (System > Manage > Classic Discovery) and run the discovery session again.
  3. Log in to the console of the Skylar One appliance where the process is running. Alternately, you can use SSH to open a shell session on the Skylar One appliance. In most cases, you will log in as "root".
  • If you are using a Skylar One system, log in to the current Skylar One appliance.
  • If you are using a distributed Skylar One system, log in to the Data Collector associated with the discovery session.

NOTE: For details on enabling and using SSH with Skylar One, information about root access, and instructions on making root access secure, see the Security section.

To view a list of IP addresses for all Skylar One appliances in your network, go to the Appliance Manager page (System > Settings > Appliances).

  1. Navigate to the directory /data/logs. View the file silo.log. The most recent entries will be posted at the end of the file.
  2. After you have finished troubleshooting the process, remember to disable debugging.

Checking Communication between Data Collectors and the Database Server

For distributed Skylar One systems, discovery can fail if the Data Collectors and the Database Server cannot communicate with each other.

To check communication between the Database Server and a Data Collector:

  1. Log in to the console of the Skylar One appliance where the process is running. Alternately, you can use SSH to open a shell session on the Skylar One appliance. Log in as em7admin.
  • If you are using a Skylar One system, log in to the current Skylar One appliance.
  • If you are using a distributed Skylar One system, log in to the Database Server.

To view a list of IP addresses for all Skylar One appliances in your network, go to the Appliance Manager page (System > Settings > Appliances).

NOTE: For details on enabling and using SSH, see the section on Security.

  1. From the command line, enter the following:

silo_mysql -P 7707 -h <IP address of the Data Collection Server associated with the discovery session> -u root -p

You will be prompted to enter the MySQL root password.

  1. If you can successfully execute this command from the Database Server, this means that the Database Server is successfully communicating with the Data Collector.
  2. If you cannot successfully execute this command from the Database Server:
  • Go to the Appliance Manager page (System > Settings > Appliances) and ensure that the settings for the Database Server and the Data Collector server are correct.
  • Ensure that a network firewall is not preventing the Database Server and the Data Collector from communicating with each other.
  • Log in to the console of the Data Collector. Alternately, you can use SSH to open a shell session on the Data Collector. Log in as em7admin. To ensure that MySQL is running on the Data Collector, enter the following at the command line:

mysqladmin -u root -p status

You will be prompted for the password.

  • If the database is running, the command will return statistics about the database.
  • If the database is not running, the command will return an error message. To restart the database, enter the following at the command line:

sudo service em7_db_start