Enable garbage collection logging for services in Puppet📍

Sometimes a garbage collection log can help troubleshoot your issues. This article explains how to enable logging of the garbage collection activity on Puppet's services.

Version and installation information

Puppet version: 3.8 to latest
Component and version: PuppetServer, PuppetDB

Solution

To enable garbage collection logging on the Puppet master or PuppetDB nodes:

1. Locate the appropriate file for your OS:

   OS	Location
   EL- based	/etc/sysconfig/puppet
   Ubuntu	/etc/default/puppet

   Edit the appropriate file for your OS the file to add the following flags to the JAVA_ARGS setting:

   -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -Xloggc:/var/log/puppetlabs/<service_name>/<service_name>_gc.log

2. Restart the appropriate service.

   puppet resource service <service_name> ensure=stopped
puppet resource service <service_name> ensure=running

Example

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux, enable logging for the Puppet Server garbage collector.

1. Edit /etc/sysconfig/puppetserver to add the following to the JAVA_ARGS setting:

   -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -Xloggc:/var/log/puppetlabs/puppetserver/puppetserver_gc.log

2. Restart Puppet Server.

   puppet resource service puppetserver ensure=stopped
puppet resource service puppetserver ensure=running