How to collect a log bundle from the vCenter Server Appliance and to download the log file using WinSCP. Log in to your vCenter Server Appliance as user “root” and using the password supplied by the customer.
As it logs into the appliance shell by default, you set the shell to “BASH” by running the command “shell.set --enabled True”, and then followed by the command “shell”. Once you’re in the “BASH” shell then you run the command to collect the logs, which is “vc-support -l”.
This can take up 20 minutes to half an hour. And when it’s complete, it will give you a path to the completed TAR Gzipped file. And there, you can see it, see the files collected, check storage log, the VCSA name, the date, and the .tGZ extension, which is the TAR zipped file.
We’re at the VCSA. In WinSCP, you need to edit the “Advanced Settings” and change the secure FTP setting to a secure FTP server. This is because BASH isn’t the default shell on login to the VCSA. Then log in as “root”. The customer will supply the password.
New login to WinSCP. Navigate to the directory in which the log bundle was collected to. In this case, “/storage/log”. And there you can see the name of the file with the timestamp incorporated into the name and the “.tgz” extension which is the TAR zipped file.
Just click and drag for the file to copy across locally. And it is good practice once it’s copied across to delete the file on the VCSA, just to conserve space. Then, close out WinSCP.
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