How to prepare your server(s) before ticket creation and provide replication steps for the Support Team

Issue 

How to prepare your server(s) before ticket creation and provide replication steps for the Support Team?

Environment

• All CloudLinux products

Solution

1. Description

This article describes the steps we recommend following before submitting a ticket to the CloudLinux support team. Statistics show that in most cases performing simple preparation actions and checks can effectively solve your problem even before the ticket creation.

To effectively resolve your issue, the support team may request access to the server while working on the ticket as well as the doctor tool key to check the various components of your system. You can read more about doctor key in this article. To prepare access to the server in advance you can read this article.

IMPORTANT: This article is only relevant for CloudLinux servers without critical problems with the file system or problems with the correct booting of the operating system and/or its modules. This article is not relevant to Imunify software.

2. Server Preparation

In order to prepare your server for an investigation from support team - please follow these steps:

• Make sure that your CloudLinux license is up to date and working.
  The easiest way to check is to run the command cldetect --check-license
  If the result is different from "OK", then try to reregister the server according to this documentation.
  
• Run the yum update command and make sure it passed without errors, the system is completely updated to the latest versions of all packages. If you use a non-standard exclude list, disable it before using the command.
  
  
• If the kernel or kernel modules (depending on the OS) were updated during the yum update, you need to reboot the server with the latest kernel version updated.
  
  Note: If you are using KernelCare, but your problem is not related to this component, a server reboot is still necessary in order to obtain all changes and fixes in the latest kernel version. The list of changes and fixes available in CloudLinux Changelog.
  
  
• Check if your problem is still actual after the steps above performed. If the problem persists - please proceed to the ticket preparation step.

3. Ticket preparation

It is important to the support team that you provide as much detail as possible when you contact us. If your answer looks like this:

"Please help my server is broken"

It is not informative, delays analysis and problem solving, which can ultimately affect your server users and create a negative interaction experience.

We recommend the following support ticket structure:

• A short issue description of the problem in your own words or a description of your observations. Describe if you performed any actions before the problem occurred, check the history of commands if you are not the only server administrator.
  
  
• Step-by-step detailed instructions on how we can reproduce the problem with all the necessary logins/passwords for reproduction if possible.
  
  
• A selection of the most important logs that show the problem or a possible vector that influences, in your opinion, the problem at hand. You can use the "code block" to provide us with logs or attach them to the ticket using the appropriate field in the interface.
  
  
• Describe why the above information is relevant to our product problem, this will help us determine what the basis for your request to us is.

Below is an example of a well-written ticket:

"Hello. My server seems broken after the recent update performed by our administrator. The affected component is yum, the update command show the following error:

[log]

The log shows that we can no longer install packages from your repositories."

It is also important to consider that during the analysis of logs, for example your website, you may find that the problem is not related to the work of our product, but due to a bug in the site itself. This will help you determine the problem much earlier and not consume additional time on making a ticket to us.