Information to provide when logging a support case

This document (000020171) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Situation

To allow us to provide quick and efficient support, we ask that customers provide as much information as possible when logging a ticket.

Below are some things that we find we typically need from customers when more information is needed.

Access

When troubleshooting interactively or gathering further information, access areas of the environment may be needed, such as:

SSH access to the affected node(s)
Access to the Rancher UI
The kubectl CLI and kubeconfig available for the related cluster(s)

Information to provide

Please consider the key details and provide as much information as possible about the related areas, below are some common questions that can be asked to help form a description when raising a ticket:

When did you first notice the issue? Please be as specific as possible, for example a time, date and timezone
Is the issue related to Rancher, the management (local) cluster, or a downstream cluster managed by Rancher?
Logs, screenshots, terminal output, error, etc. are very useful to assist troubleshooting:
- System logs are almost always required when diagnosing an issue, you can generate these using the Rancher log collector script
- For some issues it can help to capture traffic from the browser to the Rancher UI in a HAR file, the steps can be found here
- To capture as much context about the issue as possible, a screenshot to demonstrate the issue, or a copy/paste or attachment of errors or terminal output that demonstrate the issue can greatly reduce the time to resolution
What are the installed versions? For example, Rancher version, Kubernetes version of the affected cluster(s)?
- The Rancher version can be found at the bottom left of the Rancher UI or by inspecting the container image tag of the Rancher pod/container
- The Kubernetes version can be found by:
  - Navigating to the relevant cluster in the Rancher dashboard
  - Using kubectl get nodes
  - Standalone RKE clusters can be checked also with kubectl, and rke version --config <path to cluster.yml>
If the issue is related to an upgrade of Rancher or Kubernetes, what were the previous versions?
If the issue is related to a downstream cluster, which distribution and how was the cluster built? RKE1, RKE2, k3s, hosted provider, imported or custom?
Are there any GitHub issues or previous support tickets you think are related?
Are there any events that you think may correlate with the issue? For example, an infrastructure outage, host reboot, OS upgrade, Docker upgrade, network changes, configuration changes?
Have you taken any corrective action or steps?

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.