Decoding the support bundle from vMA generated by the vma-support utility

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

The vma-support script enables you to collect various system configuration information and other logs. The script generates the information as a log bundle and appends it to the vmware.log file on the ESX host on which vMA is deployed. However, when vMA support stream is redirected to ESX, it is saved in vmware.log as a plain text encoded by base64, and is captured by vma-support by default, but there is no way to extract and decode the stream.

Environment

VMware vSphere Management Assistant 5.1
VMware vSphere Management Assistant 5.5

Resolution

Prerequisites

Copy the vmware.log file to the vMA appliance to analyze the log bundle.

Procedure

1. Run vmware-xferlogs dec vmware.log command from vMA. The decoded log files are displayed. For example:
   vi-admin@wdc-eeapps-dhcp162:~> vmware-xferlogs dec vmware.log
   reading file vm-2013-07-08.14827.tgz to 0_1373516751.log
   reading file vm-2013-07-09.1451.tgz to 1_1373516751.log
   
   
2. Run "tar -xf <filename>" to extract the log files. For example:
   vi-admin@wdc-eeapps-dhcp162:~> tar -xf 0_1373516751.log
   vi-admin@wdc-eeapps-dhcp162:~> tar -xf 1_1373516751.log

Result

vm-support.1451 and vm-support.14827 folders are created in the current folder, which consists of original log files in a readable format.

How to download vmware.log file

The likely path from where you can download the vmware.log file is as follows.

1. Open the vSphere Client of the ESX/ESXi host or the vCenter Server where vMA is deployed
2. In Host and Clusters, select the Summary tab.
3. Right-click in the Storage pane and select Browse Datastore.
4. Select the vMA appliance and download the vmware.log file.
5. You can copy the vmware.log file into the vMA appliance by using WinScp or any other tool. The copied path is the complete path of vmware.log file.