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<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="collect-debug-info">
  <title>Collecting Debugging Information</title>
  
  <body>
    <p>
        For problem determination, it is often important to collect
        debugging information which can be analyzed by Oracle VM VirtualBox
        support. This section contains information about what kind of
        information can be obtained.
      </p>
    <p>
        Every time Oracle VM VirtualBox starts up a VM, a so-called
        <i>release log file</i> is created, containing
        lots of information about the VM configuration and runtime
        events. The log file is called <filepath>VBox.log</filepath> and
        resides in the VM log file folder, which is
        <filepath>$HOME/VirtualBox
        VMs/<varname>VM-name</varname>/Logs</filepath> by
        default.
      </p>
    <p>
        When starting a VM, the configuration file of the last run will
        be renamed to <filepath>.1</filepath>, up to
        <filepath>.3</filepath>. Sometimes when there is a problem, it
        is useful to have a look at the logs. Also when requesting
        support for Oracle VM VirtualBox, supplying the corresponding log file
        is mandatory.
      </p>
    <p>
        For convenience, for each virtual machine, VirtualBox Manager can show
        these logs in a window. Select a virtual machine from the
        machine list on the left and click
        <b outputclass="bold">Logs</b> in the machine tools menu.
      </p>
    <p>
        The release log file, <filepath>VBox.log</filepath>, contains a
        wealth of diagnostic information, such as Host OS type and
        version, Oracle VM VirtualBox version and build. It also includes a
        complete dump of the guest's configuration (CFGM), detailed
        information about the host CPU type and supported features,
        whether hardware virtualization is enabled, information about
        VT-x/AMD-V setup, state transitions (such as creating, running,
        paused, stopping), guest BIOS messages, Guest Additions
        messages, device-specific log entries and, at the end of
        execution, final guest state and condensed statistics.
      </p>
    <p>
        In case of crashes, it is very important to collect
        <i>crash dumps</i>. This is true for both host and
        guest crashes. For information about enabling core dumps on
        Linux, Oracle Solaris, and macOS systems, refer to the following
        core dump article on the Oracle VM VirtualBox website:
      </p>
    <p><ph>http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Core_dump</ph>.
      </p>
    <p>
        You can also use <userinput>VBoxManage debugvm</userinput> to create
        a dump of a complete virtual machine. See
        <xref href="man_VBoxManage-debugvm.dita">VBoxManage debugvm</xref>.
      </p>
    <p>
        For network related problems, it is often helpful to capture a
        trace of network traffic. If the traffic is routed through an
        adapter on the host, it is possible to use Wireshark or a
        similar tool to capture the traffic there. However, this often
        also includes a lot of traffic unrelated to the VM.
      </p>
    <p>
        Oracle VM VirtualBox provides an ability to capture network traffic
        only on a specific VM's network adapter. Refer to the following
        network tracing article on the Oracle VM VirtualBox website for
        information on enabling this capture:
      </p>
    <p><ph>http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Network_tips</ph>.
      </p>
    <p>
        The trace files created by Oracle VM VirtualBox are in
        <filepath>.pcap</filepath> format and can be easily analyzed
        with Wireshark.
      </p>
  </body>
  
</topic>