Debugging

Things go wrong. That is just the nature of the world. SlipStream provides various methods for debugging problems when they arise.

When creating a new application, very often there are bugs in the deployment scripts. Iteratively modifying the scripts through SlipStream and redeploying the machines can cause unnecessary delays. If you have selected an option that lets failed deployments continue to run, you can instead:

  1. Log into a failed deployment,
  2. Setup the environment for the SlipStream client (see below),
  3. Reset the abort flag with the ss-abort --cancel command, and
  4. Update and rerun the deployment script(s)

This allows for a much faster development cycle. The deployment scripts can be found in the directory /var/lib/slipstream, with names that correspond to each phase of the deployment. The logs from the initial execution of these scripts are below

  • /var/log/slipstream/client on Linux
  • %TMP%\slipstream\reports on Windows.

Once the problems in the deployment scripts have been ironed out, just copy them back into SlipStream.

Modifying the Environment

SlipStream minimizes its footprint to avoid any unintended interference with the deployed applications. Because of this, you must specifically setup the environment to make the SlipStream client commands accessible. Usually you will want to do the following:

$ source /opt/slipstream/client/sbin/slipstream.setenv

You should then have all of the SlipStream client commands (all prefixed with ss-) in your path. All of the commands support the --help option to give you information about the command.

Major Client Commands

There are actually just a few commands in the SlipStream client that are used in deployment scripts and in debugging. The following table summarizes them.

ss-get Retrieves a named parameter, waiting if the parameter has not yet been set.
ss-set Sets the value of a named parameter.
ss-random Generates a random string value and optionally sets a named parameter with this value.
ss-abort Sets the deployment abort flag or clears it with the --cancel option.
ss-display Sets a string in the run for display purposes.

All of the parameters used in the deployment must have been defined in the components used in the deployment. Trying to set or get an undefined parameter will cause the command to raise an error, which in turn aborts the run.

Important

Although the “parameter database” and the associated commands are quite simple, the fact that ss-get will wait for a value to be set allows it to act as a semaphore to coordinate the configuration scripts on different machines in a multi-node deployment.

EXERCISES

  1. Log into a machine that has been deployed via SlipStream and setup the environment to access the SlipStream client.
  2. Understand the options and behavior of the major commands by looking through the --help text.
  3. Find the deployment scripts for the machine that you’ve deployed. Try executing them by hand to see what happens.
  4. Set and clear the abort flag for your deployment. How does the behavior of ss-set and ss-get change when the abort flag is set?