Intel® Ethernet Adapters and Devices User Guide
Debug Dump
Some Intel Ethernet 800 Series devices support debug dump, which allows you to obtain runtime register values from the firmware for “clusters” of events and then write the results to a single dump file, for debugging complicated issues in the field.
This debug dump contains a snapshot of the device and its existing hardware configuration, such as switch tables, transmit scheduler tables, and other information. Debug dump captures the current state of the specified cluster(s) and is a stateless snapshot of the whole device.
The contents of the debug dump are not human-readable. You must work with Customer Support to decode the file.
Debug dump is per device, not per PF.
Debug dump writes all information to a single file.
Exact steps will vary by OS, but do the following to generate a debug dump log file:
Using the method appropriate for your OS (see OS-Specific Information below), specify the clusters for which you want to dump the hardware configuration. Supported clusters will vary by OS and hardware family.
Specify the path and filename for the dump file to be written to (optional depending on your OS).
Execute the command to write the debug dump file.
After the log file is written, work with Customer Support to decode the dump file.
OS-Specific Information
Use the following tools or commands to write the debug dump results to a dump file.
Windows Server, Azure Stack HCI: Use either of the following:
Write-IntelEthernetDebugDump Ethernet cmdlet in PowerShell (see the cmdlet help for more information)Intel® Ethernet Inspector
Windows: Not supported
Linux: Use debugfs (see the Linux base driver README for more information)
ESXi: Use esxcli (see below)
FreeBSD: Use sysctl (see the FreeBSD base driver README for more information)
810 Series devices support debug dump on the operating systems listed above.
820 Series devices only support debug dump on Linux.
ESXi
For this functionality to work, you must have installed version 1.10.x or higher of the intnet tool, which is a plugin to the esxcli tool. You can download the latest version from the Intel Download Center here.
In esxcli, use the following command to generate the debug dump file for your specified cluster(s):
esxcli intnet debug fw dump <Cmd options>
Where
- -n, --vmnic <string>
Specifies the vmnic name to operate on. This field is required.
- -c, --clusters <string>
[Optional] Specifies the clusters to dump.
To specify multiple clusters, enclose a single string in quotes, separated by commas with no spaces. For example:
esxcli intnet debug fw dump -n vmnic0 --clusters "ACL,L2P"
If
-c is not specified, the driver dumps all clusters.- -l, --list
Displays the complete list of valid clusters on the screen.
To show the complete list of valid clusters, use the following:
esxcli intnet debug fw dump -n <vmnicX> -l
esxcli will output the debug dump results to a single file in the