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Collecting Agama logs

Getting Agama logs from an installed system​

If the installation was successful and you can boot into the newly installed system and log in, get the Agama logs from /var/log/agama-installation.

The "agama logs store" command​

In a running Agama live ISO (i.e. when booted from the installation ISO), use this command to collect logs:

agama logs store

It will tell you the exact path and filename where it stored the logs.

See also the agama logs store command line reference.

Beware: RAM disk!​

Notice that you will still have to copy them to a permanent location; the installation runs from a RAM disk at this point that will be gone when the Agama live session terminates, or when the installation boots (or tries to boot) into the freshly installed system.

See section saving the logs to a permanent location below.

Waiting for the right time​

Of course it's important to pick the right time to collect the logs; they are typically needed for a bug report, so they should be collected when the problematic part happened, not before, so the logs actually contain the relevant information.

If the installation works all the way to the end, that's easy: Wait until the "reboot now" page appears and then collect the logs.

If there is a crash during the installation, and you can still access a shell (xterm or text console), do it after the crash.

If the whole live system hangs or crashes at a random point, it's tricky; then you may have to use boot parameters to enable an ssh session from the outside, log in via that ssh session and hope for the best (i.e. that your ssh session remains useable).

How to get a shell​

Starting an xterm​

From a running graphical Agama session, you can start an xterm terminal window with a root shell session. At the time of this writing, the key combination was Ctrl+Alt+T (for "Terminal").

If you click outside of that xterm, it may disappear behind the active Agama window. Use Alt+Tab (maybe repeatedly) to fetch it to the foreground again.

When done, you can close the xterm with the [x] close button at its top right corner or with the exit command or with Ctrl+D.

Setting the keyboard layout in the xterm​

You will still have the US keyboard layout (QWERTY) if you haven't set a different one in the installer settings in Agama. You can load a national variant with the setxkbmap command:

setxkbmap de

(for the German keyboard)

setxkbmap fr

(for the French keyboard)

or it for Italian, cz for Czech etc.

Switching to a text console​

If you are running Agama in graphical mode on the system console, you can switch to one of the text consoles with Ctrl+Alt+F1 or Ctrl+Alt+F2 ... Ctrl+Alt+F6.

Then log in as "root" and use the password just above the login prompt. Notice that this password is freshly generated; it's different each time the live system is booted.

Ignore the QR code on the console: That does NOT represent the password, it's the URL with the IP of the machine that is being installed; something like https://192.168.178.171.

Your keyboard may still be using the US layout (QWERTY); if you are used to a national keyboard layout (e.g. German QWERTZ), some letters or special characters may be on different keys.

Back to the graphical session​

Use Ctrl+Alt+F7 or just Alt+F7 to get back to the graphical session.

VirtualBox etc.: On-screen keyboard​

If running in a virtualization environment like VirtualBox, you may want to use the on-screen keyboard to use those Ctrl+Alt+Fx key combinations (VirtualBox: Menu "Input" -> "Keyboard" -> "Soft Keyboard"). This may also help with the keyboard layout problem when entering the password.

Notice that you need to click the Shift key on the on-screen keyboard to get upper-case letters; using the physical Shift key on your normal keyboard will probably not have any effect.

Saving the logs to a permanent location​

Since the installation runs from a RAM disk, you need to copy any collected logs to a permanent location: One of

  • A networked machine

  • A mounted storage medium (USB stick, SD card)

Copying over the network​

From the machine where the installation is running:

scp /tmp/agama-logs*.tar.gz root@myworkingmachine:/tmp

Or use the IP address of the target machine: (find out on that machine with the ip acommand)

scp /tmp/agama-logs*.tar.gz root@192.176.178.42:/tmp

Copying on a USB stick or SD card​

Plug in the USB stick or SD card, then check what device name it uses with

lsblk

Then mount that device, copy the agama logs file and unmount the device again:

mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt
cp /tmp/agama-logs*.tar.gz /mnt
umount /mnt

(Assuming the device for the USB stick or SD card was /dev/sdx1)

If /mnt was busy at that point, create a new directory (say, /mnt2) and use that one instead.