SymDaemon is the core process of the Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) for Macintosh client. It is responsible for scheduling tasks, communicating with the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager (SEPM), and applying policies among other things. Use the following steps to generate detailed, debug level logging for the SymDaemon process of the SEP for Macintosh client.
NOTE: This is for the on-premises SEP for Mac only; there is no equivalent debug logging for the cloud-managed SES Mac client.
All supported Mac OS version 10.x to 13.x
SEP for Mac
You have been asked by a Broadcom support engineer to provide a debug trace of the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager SymDaemon process.
Open terminal window and navigate to the SMC folder location—
For SEP 14.2 RU2 and newer:
cd /Library/Application\ Support/Symantec/Silo/MES/SMC
For SEP 14.2 RU1 MP2 and older:
cd /Library/Application\ Support/Symantec/SMC
The following instructions assume that this is the current directory and tools folder is located here.
To enable debug logging:
NOTE: The SetSettings command is missing in SEP 14.3 RU5 & RU6 -- replace it with the RU3 SetSettings attached at bottom of this article.
# SEP 14.2.x and newer:
sudo ./tools/SetSettings -ldebug
# SEP 14.0.x and older:
sudo ./tools/SetSettings -lengineer
Additionally:
sudo cp com.symantec.trace.plist /Library/Preferences/
The library file 'com.symantec.trace.plist' is attached at bottom of this article.
Restart the Mac.
VERIFY that "DEBUG" statements are appearing in ../SMC/debug/smc_debug.log before proceeding.
ptrace logging should appear in /Library/Logs/Symantec/ClientSDKService-###.log