Error determination from logs

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10185613-B2
Application number	US-201615142893-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 29, 2016
Priority date	Apr 29, 2016
Publication date	Jan 22, 2019
Grant date	Jan 22, 2019

Abstract

The present disclosure is related to devices, systems, and methods for determining errors from logs. An example device can include instructions to analyze a log of a log source, determine an error in the log, the error resulting from a user action with respect to the log source, and provide a portion of the log associated with the error to a user interface.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing instructions executable by a processing resource to cause a computing system to:
place a marker in a log of a log source indicating a user action with respect to the log source that set a verified state;
analyze the log;
determine an error in the log, the error resulting from:
the user action; and
an event occurring after the user action that impacted the verified state, rendering the verified state incorrect and causing the error; and

provide a portion of the log associated with the error to a user interface.

2. The medium of claim 1 , wherein the log source is an application, and wherein the instructions include instructions to place the marker in a memory of the application.

3. The medium of claim 1 , wherein the error is a configuration error.

4. The medium of claim 1 , wherein the user interface is particular to the log source.

5. The medium of claim 1 , wherein the error is a non-fatal error.

6. The medium of claim 1 , wherein the user interface is configured to allow configuration of the log source and a plurality of additional log sources.

7. A system, comprising:
a management server; and
a plurality of log sources coupled to the management server;
wherein the management server is configured to distribute a change to the plurality of log sources; and
wherein the plurality of log sources are each configured to:
maintain a system log;
place a marker in the system log indicating the change, wherein the change is logically correct at an initial time;
analyze a portion of the system log after the marker in response to a non-fatal error caused by an event that occurred subsequent to the change rendering the change logically incorrect at a subsequent time; and
send a relevant portion of the system log, based on the analysis, to the management server.

8. The system of claim 7 , wherein the relevant portion of the log comprises a remainder of the system log after the marker.

9. The system of claim 7 , wherein the relevant portion of the log comprises entries in the system log, after the marker, which are related to the error.

10. The system of claim 7 , wherein the change is syntactically correct;
wherein the change is logically correct for a first subset of the plurality of log sources; and
wherein the change is logically incorrect for a second subset of the plurality of log sources, thereby causing the non-fatal error for the second subset of the plurality of log sources.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein each of the plurality of log sources being configured to analyze the portion of the system log comprise the plurality of log sources being configured to identify whether the change is logically incorrect for each of the plurality of log sources.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the management server is configured to distribute a second change to the second subset of the plurality of log sources; and
wherein the second change is logically correct for the second subset of the plurality of log sources.

13. The system of claim 7 , wherein the change is logically correct for a particular log source in an initial state; and
wherein the change is logically incorrect for the particular log source in a subsequent state.

14. A method, comprising:
analyzing a log of a log source;
determining an error in the log resulting from:
a user action initiated at a user interface that set a verified state; and
an event occurring after the user action that impacted the verified state, rendering the verified state syntactically correct and logically incorrect and causing the error; and

providing a notification associated with the error to a user interface, wherein the notification includes a portion of the log following a marker placed in the log indicating the user action.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the user action includes an asynchronous operation deemed acceptable by the user interface of the management server, wherein the asynchronous operation fails at a later time causing the error.

16. The method of claim 14 , wherein the user action involves a plurality of steps having at least one failed intermediate step causing the error.

17. The method of claim 14 , wherein providing the notification associated with the error includes providing the notification in a message.

18. The method of claim 14 , wherein providing the notification associated with the error includes providing the notification in an agent configuration page of the user interface.

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Movsisyan Vardan
• Bolibekyan Hovhannes

Classifications

• G06F11/0751

  Error or fault detection not based on redundancy (power supply failures G06F1/30; network fault management H04L41/06) · CPC title

• G06F11/079 Primary

  Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis (in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36) · CPC title

• G06F11/0709

  in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems · CPC title

• G06F11/0787 Primary

  Storage of error reports, e.g. persistent data storage, storage using memory protection · CPC title

• G06F11/0784

  Routing of error reports, e.g. with a specific transmission path or data flow · CPC title