Improved support information for RHEL on Azure: sosreport plugin updated

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a tool called sosreport that improves the ability to get support by collecting accurate current details of system information, configuration, and diagnostic information. The "sos" command is an excellent point to start the investigation when your system has an issue. In addition, the file generated by sosreport is usually a starting point when a Red Hat support engineer investigates. Even if you're not an administrator but a developer, the sosreport is easy to use.  Just type ``sos`` using sudo or as root.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux system running on Azure, some Azure specific components are needed and have an important role. For example, WALinuxAgent is a required service for a RHEL system running on Azure. With the previous version of the Azure plugin for sosreport  you could collect the configuration and logs of AzureLinuxAgent with the following command.

$ sudo sos -e azure

*The -e option  explicitly enabled the azure plugin.)

Sosreport 3.6

The sosreport Azure plugin has updated as of sosreport 3.6 and improves some features. You can try it by updating packages.

$ sudo yum update

Today, I'd like to introduce the new features.

• The Azure plugin is automatically enabled when WALinuxAgent is installed.  Now you don't have to specify "-e azure" option to enable this plugin. When WALinuxAgent is installed, sosreport automatically enables Azure plugin. WALinuxAgent is installed on all RHEL Servers on Azure since WALinuxAgent is an essential package to run RHEL on Azure.
• Azure instance metadata is collected. Azure instance metadata helps collect the fundamental information of the Azure virtual machine. You don't have to collect it manually.
• When the VM is an Azure Marketplace VM, RHUI information is collected. The Azure Marketplace RHEL VM subscribes Azure RHUI. New plugin tests the connection to Azure RHUI and collects the client cert.

In addition, WALinuxAgent configuration file and logs are collected like the old version. Here are the screenshots of the collected files.

Please update the sosreport 3.6 to try these new features and give me any feedback. You can update only sos package only by ``yum update sos``. However, Red Hat recommends updating the whole packages in your system.