How do I put vertica's spread process in debug?

Products

• CA Infrastructure Management
• CA Performance Management - Usage and Administration

Issue/Introduction

The spread process is the process that controls inter-cluster communication between vertica nodes.  When there are problems with inter-cluster communication how can I put vertica's spread process into debug?

Environment

All versions of vertica

Resolution

To turn on spread debug do the following:

1. Log on to a DR node and switch to the dradmin user
2. cd /opt/vertica/bin and launch adminTools
3. Choose #2 to "Connect to database"
4. Run the following queries to turn on spread logging:
   • select set_spread_options('/opt/vertica/log/spread.log', 'MEMBERSHIP PRINT CONFIGURATION GROUPS SESSION EXIT', 'ExitOnIdle = yes'); 
   • select reload_spread(true); 
5. Run the following queries to turn off spread logging:
   • select set_spread_options('/dev/null', 'PRINT EXIT', 'ExitOnIdle = yes'); 
   • select reload_spread(true); 

Additional Information

• Spread debug is logged in /opt/vertica/log/spread.log
• When you enable spread logging it is enabled on all nodes
• Spread.log should be collected along with other diagnostic information like scrutinize, vioperf, vcpuperf, and vnetperf to determine why there might be issues with inter-cluster communication