How can I debug system issues?

Help with getting and checking diagnostics logs to determine the source of potential system issues

Generating diagnostics logs

Run sudo pt-diagnostics in a terminal window will generate diagnostics logs that can help to diagnose issues.

Once the logs are collected, you are asked if you would like to encrypt your data with a password. It is strongly recommended that you do this if you are intending to share your information with anyone. These logs may contain personally identifiable information - do not give this out to anyone that you do not trust.

If you are generating these logs to review yourself, then this is not necessary.

After this, you are asked if you would like to upload this to a free file storing service, which can simplify the process of sending to others.

If you wish to review the contents of the logs, they can be found at /tmp/pt-diagnostics.zip

Analysing diagnostics logs

Run the following command to extract the logs into a directory on your Desktop

unzip /tmp/pt-diagnostics.zip -d /home/pi/Desktop/

Inside, you will see some directories, and a file called pt-diagnostics.info. This file contains the version of the diagnostics tool, as well as date and time information about when the log was generated.

The following directories are generated:

 

DeviceManager

Shows which I2C addresses are showing connected devices, as well as the log output of the pi-top device manager service.

Hardware

Shows a dump of the state of the pi-top [3] or pi-top [4].

Network

Shows key network interface configuration

OS

Shows core OS configuration, such as running processes, kernel startup logs, etc.

pi-topCODER

Shows pi-topCODER log output.

ptOSConfig

Shows the contents of /home/pi/.config/pi-top/.

Software

Shows which software repositories are being used, and the names of all software packages currently installed on the system.

Systemd

Shows all system service statuses.

Upgrades

Shows record of all apt-based software updates.