vSphere Plugin Logs and Debug

Enterprise

Bacula Enterprise Only

This solution is only available for Bacula Enterprise. For subscription inquiries, please reach out to sales@baculasystems.com.

The vSphere Plugin uses many different technologies and third party libraries. The result is that traces are spread among different directories on the backup server. You will be able to consult the following files:

vSphere plugin traces
File	Component	Note
/opt/bacula/``/vsphere-ctl-``.log	vsphere-ctl	This file is produced by the Java vsphere-ctl program that sends commands to the ESXi/vCenter server.
/opt/bacula/working/vsphere/``/``/`*`.log	vddk	This file is produced by the C++ vddk program that read/write to the VMDK.
/opt/bacula/working/`*`.trace	bacula-fd	This file is produced Bacula File Daemon when activating the debug.

Debug

To enable DEBUG and TRACE messages at the vsphere-ctl level, it is necessary to create a file in the same directory where vsphere-ctl binary is running, named vsphere-ctl.log4j.properties.

log4j.rootLogger=TRACE, file
log4j.appender.file=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.file.File=${logfile}
log4j.appender.file.MaxFileSize=10MB
log4j.appender.file.MaxBackupIndex=3
log4j.appender.file.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.file.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} %-5p %c{1}:%L - %m%n

By default, the level is INFO, but it is possible to define DEBUG or TRACE (TRACE is set in the example above). This will generate verbose information, so it should only be used under controlled circumstances where it is disabled afterwards. The debug information will be contained in /opt/bacula/*/vsphere-ctl-*.log logs.

For vddk level, it is possible to enable debug verbose output as well. It is necessary to create (if it does not exist) the file /opt/bacula/etc/vixdisklib.conf with the following contents:

vixDiskLib.transport.LogLevel=7
vixDiskLib.nfc.LogLevel=4

That will generate verbose information in /opt/bacula/working/vsphere/*/*/*.log.

Finally, Bacula File Daemon has its own debugging technique, explained in Debugging, where we just need to run the following command in BConsole:

setdebug level=nnn client=client-name trace=1 options=t

And we will find the corresponding trace file: /opt/bacula/working/client-name.trace.

BVMDK to VDDK

To extract the bvmdk file without converting it with vddk on the fly during a restore, you need to set the File Daemon debug level to 1. Bacula may report a false error during the restore about the file size. This occurrence is typical.