Stay organized with collections Save and categorize content based on your preferences.
Container-Optimized OS includes the sosreport utility, which collects information on demand to help you debug problems in a Container-Optimized OS virtual machine instance. The information is collected and stored locally on the filesystem of the instance. Google does not collect or store this data elsewhere.
If you open a support case with Google Cloud support due to problems with your instance, you may be asked to provide the sosreport data as part of the investigation. This page shows you how to collect this information.
sosreport might be challenging. Node auto-repair will terminate and re-create the node after some time of unavailability. See Disabling node auto-repair if sosreport collection cannot be done before the node is terminated by auto-repair. If auto-repair cannot be disabled because the cluster is in release channel, contact Cloud Customer Care for assistance.
The output of sosreport is stored without encryption in a .tar.xz archive. The archive may contain personally identifiable information (PII), because it collects data from many critical system components (e.g. journald). The archive can be inspected on the instance, and most content is in plain text. The sosreport tool is open source, and you can review its code.
To generate a sosreport:
Connect to the instance using the gcloud compute ssh command.
gcloud compute ssh [INSTANCE_NAME] --zone [ZONE] --project [PROJECT_ID]
Check the OS version:
sudo cat /etc/os-release| egrep -w 'NAME|VERSION'
The output is similar to the following:
NAME="Container-Optimized OS"
VERSION=105
Run the sos command that corresponds to your OS version:
Run the following sosreport command to collect the logs:
sudo sosreport --all-logs --batch --tmp-dir=/var
If the previous command fails with sosreport: command not found, install the sosreport package and then run the previous sosreport command:
sudo toolbox
sudo apt install sosreport -y
Run the following sos command to collect the logs:
sudo sos report --all-logs --batch --tmp-dir=/var
If the previous command fails with sos: command not found, install the sosreport package and then run the previous sos report command:
sudo toolbox
sudo apt install sosreport -y
Run the following sosreport command to collect the logs:
sudo sosreport --all-logs --batch --tmp-dir=/var
If the previous command fails with sosreport: command not found, install the sosreport package and then run the previous sosreport command:
sudo apt install sosreport
Run the following sos command to collect the logs:
sudo sos report --all-logs --batch --tmp-dir=/var
If the previous command fails with sos: command not found, install the sosreport package and then run the previous sos report command:
sudo apt install sosreport
You can change the directory where the report is stored by passing a different directory to the --tmp-dir option. You can also change the command's default behavior by editing /etc/sos.conf on the instance.
The output is stored in a .tar.xz file in the directory you specify using the --tmp-dir option. The location and checksum of the .tar.xz file is shown on STDOUT.
Your sosreport has been generated and saved in:
/var/sosreport-cos-20181106231224.tar.xz
The checksum is: 5a8b97c6020346a688254c8b04ef86ec
The report is owned by root and is not readable by other users. Use the following commands to change the owner to your current user and make it readable by you. Do not make it world-readable.
TARBALL=[PATH/TO/TARBALL] sudo chown $(whoami) $TARBALL chmod +r $TARBALL
Then, if you want to view the content of the report on the node, you can extract it by running below command:
tar xvf $TARBALL
The individual report files are now available in a directory in the same location as the .tar.xz. You can view the logs using commands such as less, or you can use commands such as grep to find information in them.
To download the report to your local machine, use the gcloud compute scp command:
gcloud compute scp $(whoami)@[INSTANCE_NAME]:[PATH/TO/FILE] [LOCAL/PATH/TO/DIRECTORY]
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC."],[[["Container-Optimized OS includes the `sosreport` utility for debugging, which gathers diagnostic information locally on a virtual machine instance without Google storing it."],["The `sosreport` data, which may contain PII, is stored as an unencrypted `.tar.xz` archive and can be requested by Google Cloud support when investigating issues."],["Generating a `sosreport` consumes CPU, memory, disk space, and I/O resources, and its collection may be challenging during node availability or startup issues due to auto-repair."],["To collect the `sosreport`, users must connect to the instance via SSH, check the OS version, and run the appropriate `sosreport` or `sos report` command, installing the `sosreport` package if needed."],["Once generated, users can view and extract the report's contents locally using `tar`, and they can download the report to their local machine using `gcloud compute scp`."]]],[]]
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4