Troubleshooting

Introduction to Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting the Element Installer comes down to knowing a little bit about kubernetes and how to check the status of the various resources. This guide will walk you through some of the initial steps that you'll want to take when things are going wrong.

Known issues

Airgapped installation does not start

If you are using element-enterprise-graphical-installer-2023-03.02-gui.bin and element-enterprise-installer-airgapped-2023-03.02-gui.tar.gz. You might run into an error looking like this :

Looking in links: ./airgapped/pip

WARNING: Url './airgapped/pip' is ignored. It is either a non-existing path or lacks a specific scheme.

ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement wheel (from versions: none)

ERROR: No matching distribution found for wheel

The workaround for it is to copy the pip folder from the airgapped directory to ~/.element-enterprise-server/installer/airgapped/pip

install.sh problems

Sometimes there will be problems when running the ansible-playbook portion of the installer. When this happens, you can increase the verbosity of ansible logging by editing .ansible.rc in the installer directory and setting:

export ANSIBLE_DEBUG=true
export ANSIBLE_VERBOSITY=4

and re-running the installer. This will generate quite verbose output, but that typically will help pinpoint what the actual problem with the installer is.

Problems post-installation

Checking Pod Status and Getting Logs

• In general, a well-functioning Element stack has at it's minimum the following containers (or pods in kubernetes language) running:

  [user@element2 ~]$ kubectl get pods -n element-onprem
  NAME                                        READY   STATUS    RESTARTS      AGE
  instance-synapse-main-0                     1/1     Running   4 (27h ago)   6d21h
  postgres-0                                  1/1     Running   2 (27h ago)   6d21h
  app-element-web-688489b777-v7l2m            1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)   6d22h
  server-well-known-55bdb6b66-m8px6           1/1     Running   2 (27h ago)   6d21h
  instance-synapse-haproxy-554bd57975-z2ppv   1/1     Running   3 (27h ago)   6d21h
  

  The above kubectl get pods -n element-onprem is the first place to start. You'll notice in the above, all of the pods are in the Running status and this indicates that all should be well. If the state is anything other than "Running" or "Creating", then you'll want to grab logs for those pods. To grab the logs for a pod, run:

  kubectl logs -n element-onprem <pod name>
  

  replacing <pod name> with the actual pod name. If we wanted to get the logs from synapse, the specific syntax would be:

  kubectl logs -n element-onprem instance-synapse-main-0
  

  and this would generate logs similar to:

   2022-05-03 17:46:33,333 - synapse.util.caches.lrucache - 154 - INFO - LruCache._expire_old_entries-2887 - Dropped 0 items from caches
  2022-05-03 17:46:33,375 - synapse.storage.databases.main.metrics - 471 - INFO - generate_user_daily_visits-289 - Calling _generate_user_daily_visits
  2022-05-03 17:46:58,424 - synapse.metrics._gc - 118 - INFO - sentinel - Collecting gc 1
  2022-05-03 17:47:03,334 - synapse.util.caches.lrucache - 154 - INFO - LruCache._expire_old_entries-2888 - Dropped 0 items from caches
  2022-05-03 17:47:33,333 - synapse.util.caches.lrucache - 154 - INFO - LruCache._expire_old_entries-2889 - Dropped 0 items from caches
  2022-05-03 17:48:03,333 - synapse.util.caches.lrucache - 154 - INFO - LruCache._expire_old_entries-2890 - Dropped 0 items from caches
  

• Again, for every pod not in the Running or Creating status, you'll want to use the above procedure to get the logs for Element to look at.

• If you don't have any pods in the element-onprem namespace as indicated by running the above command, then you should run:

  [user@element2 ~]$ kubectl get pods -A
  NAMESPACE            NAME                                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS       AGE
  container-registry   registry-5f697bb7df-dbzpq                    1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)    6d22h
  kube-system          dashboard-metrics-scraper-69d9497b54-hdrdq   1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)    6d22h
  kube-system          hostpath-provisioner-7764447d7c-jckkc        1/1     Running   11 (17h ago)   6d22h
  element-onprem       instance-synapse-main-0                      1/1     Running   4 (27h ago)    6d22h
  element-onprem       postgres-0                                   1/1     Running   2 (27h ago)    6d22h
  element-onprem       app-element-web-688489b777-v7l2m             1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)    6d22h
  element-onprem       server-well-known-55bdb6b66-m8px6            1/1     Running   2 (27h ago)    6d21h
  kube-system          calico-kube-controllers-6966456d6b-x4scn     1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)    6d22h
  element-onprem       instance-synapse-haproxy-554bd57975-z2ppv    1/1     Running   3 (27h ago)    6d21h
  kube-system          calico-node-l28tp                            1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)    6d22h
  kube-system          coredns-64c6478b6c-h5jp4                     1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)    6d22h
  ingress              nginx-ingress-microk8s-controller-n6wmk      1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)    6d22h
  operator-onprem      osdk-controller-manager-5f9d86f765-t2kn9     2/2     Running   9 (17h ago)    6d22h
  kube-system          metrics-server-679c5f986d-msfc5              1/1     Running   6 (27h ago)    6d22h
  kube-system          kubernetes-dashboard-585bdb5648-vrn42        1/1     Running   10 (17h ago)   6d22h
  

• This is the output from a healthy system, but if you have any of these pods not in the Running or Creating state, then please gather logs using the following syntax:

  kubectl logs -n <namespace> <pod name>
  

• So to gather logs for the kubernetes ingress, you would run:

  kubectl logs -n ingress nginx-ingress-microk8s-controller-n6wmk
  

  and you would see logs similar to:

  I0502 14:15:08.467258       6 leaderelection.go:248] attempting to acquire leader lease ingress/ingress-controller-leader...
  I0502 14:15:08.467587       6 controller.go:155] "Configuration changes detected, backend reload required"
  I0502 14:15:08.481539       6 leaderelection.go:258] successfully acquired lease ingress/ingress-controller-leader
  I0502 14:15:08.481656       6 status.go:84] "New leader elected" identity="nginx-ingress-microk8s-controller-n6wmk"
  I0502 14:15:08.515623       6 controller.go:172] "Backend successfully reloaded"
  I0502 14:15:08.515681       6 controller.go:183] "Initial sync, sleeping for 1 second"
  I0502 14:15:08.515705       6 event.go:282] Event(v1.ObjectReference{Kind:"Pod", Namespace:"ingress", Name:"nginx-ingress-microk8s-controller-n6wmk", UID:"548d9478-094e-4a19-ba61-284b60152b85", APIVersion:"v1", ResourceVersion:"524688", FieldPath:""}): type: 'Normal' reason: 'RELOAD' NGINX reload triggered due to a change in configuration
  

  Again, for all pods not in the Running or Creating state, please use the above method to get log data to send to Element.

Other Commands of Interest

Some other commands that may yield some interesting data while troubleshooting are:

• Verify DNS names and IPs in certificates

  In the certs directory under the configuration directory, run:

  for i in $(ls *crt); do echo $i && openssl x509 -in $i -noout -text | grep DNS; done
  

  This will give you output similar to:

  local.crt
                DNS:local, IP Address:192.168.122.118, IP Address:127.0.0.1
  synapse2.local.crt
                DNS:synapse2.local, IP Address:192.168.122.118, IP Address:127.0.0.1
  

  and this will allow you to verify that you have the right host names and IP addresses in your certificates.

• Show hostname to IP mappings from within a pod

  Run:

  kubectl exec -n element-onprem <pod_name> -- getent hosts
  

  and you will see output similar to:

  127.0.0.1       localhost
  127.0.0.1       localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
  10.1.241.30     instance-hookshot-0.instance-hookshot.element-onprem.svc.cluster.local instance-hookshot-0
  192.168.122.5   ems.onprem element.ems.onprem hs.ems.onprem adminbot.ems.onprem auditbot.ems.onprem integrator.ems.onprem hookshot.ems.onprem admin.ems.onprem eleweb.ems.onprem
  

  This will help you troubleshoot host resolution.

• Show all persistent volumes and persistent volume claims for the element-onprem namespace:

  kubectl get pv -n element-onprem
  

  This will give you output similar to:

  NAME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   RECLAIM POLICY   STATUS   CLAIM                               STORAGECLASS        REASON   AGE
  pvc-9fc3bc29-2e5d-4b88-a9cd-a4c855352404   20Gi       RWX            Delete           Bound    container-registry/registry-claim   microk8s-hostpath            55d
  synapse-media                              50Gi       RWO            Delete           Bound    element-onprem/synapse-media        microk8s-hostpath            7d
  postgres                                   5Gi        RWO            Delete           Bound    element-onprem/postgres             microk8s-hostpath            7d
  

• Show the synapse configuration:

  For installers prior to 2022-05.06, use:

  kubectl describe cm -n element-onprem instance-synapse-shared
  

  and this will return output similar to:

  send_federation: True
  start_pushers: True
  turn_allow_guests: true
  turn_shared_secret: n0t4ctuAllymatr1Xd0TorgSshar3d5ecret4obvIousreAsons
  turn_uris:
  - turns:turn.matrix.org?transport=udp
  - turns:turn.matrix.org?transport=tcp
  turn_user_lifetime: 86400000
  

  For the 2022-05.06 installer and later, use:

  kubectl -n element-onprem get secret synapse-secrets -o yaml 2>&1 | grep shared.yaml | awk -F 'shared.yaml: ' '{print $2}' - | base64 -d
  

  and you will get output similar to the above.

• Show the Element Web configuration:

  kubectl describe cm -n element-onprem app-element-web
  

  and this will return output similar to:

  config.json:
  ----
  {
      "default_server_config": {
          "m.homeserver": {
              "base_url": "https://synapse2.local",
              "server_name": "local"
          } 
    },
    "dummy_end": "placeholder",
    "integrations_jitsi_widget_url": "https://dimension.element2.local/widgets/jitsi",
    "integrations_rest_url": "https://dimension.element2.local/api/v1/scalar",
    "integrations_ui_url": "https://dimension.element2.local/element",
    "integrations_widgets_urls": [
        "https://dimension.element2.local/widgets"
    ]
  }
  

• Show the nginx configuration for Element Web: (If using nginx as your ingress controller in production or using the PoC installer.)

  kubectl describe cm -n element-onprem app-element-web-nginx
  

  and this will return output similar to:

    server {
        listen       8080;
  
        add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
        add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
        add_header Content-Security-Policy "frame-ancestors 'self'";
        add_header X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow, noarchive, noimageindex";
  
        location / {
            root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
            index  index.html index.htm;
  
            charset utf-8;
        }
    }
  

• Check list of active kubernetes events:

  kubectl get events -A
  

  You will see a list of events or the message No resources found.

• Show the state of services in the element-onprem namespace:

  kubectl get services -n element-onprem
  

  This should return output similar to:

  NAME                             TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                    AGE
  postgres                         ClusterIP   10.152.183.47    <none>        5432/TCP                   6d23h
  app-element-web                  ClusterIP   10.152.183.60    <none>        80/TCP                     6d23h
  server-well-known                ClusterIP   10.152.183.185   <none>        80/TCP                     6d23h
  instance-synapse-main-headless   ClusterIP   None             <none>        80/TCP                     6d23h
  instance-synapse-main-0          ClusterIP   10.152.183.105   <none>        80/TCP,9093/TCP,9001/TCP   6d23h
  instance-synapse-haproxy         ClusterIP   10.152.183.78    <none>        80/TCP                     6d23h
  

• Show the status of the stateful sets in the element-onprem namespace:

  kubectl get sts -n element-onprem
  

  This should return output similar to:

  NAME                    READY   AGE
  postgres                1/1     6d23h
  instance-synapse-main   1/1     6d23h
  

• Show deployments in the element-onprem namespace:

  kubectl get deploy -n element-onprem
  

  This will return output similar to:

  NAME                       READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
  app-element-web            1/1     1            1           6d23h
  server-well-known          1/1     1            1           6d23h
  instance-synapse-haproxy   1/1     1            1           6d23h
  

• Show the status of all namespaces:

  kubectl get namespaces
  

  which will return output similar to:

  NAME                 STATUS   AGE
  kube-system          Active   20d
  kube-public          Active   20d
  kube-node-lease      Active   20d
  default              Active   20d
  ingress              Active   6d23h
  container-registry   Active   6d23h
  operator-onprem      Active   6d23h
  element-onprem       Active   6d23h
  

• View the MAU Settings in Synapse:

  kubectl get  -n element-onprem secrets/synapse-secrets -o yaml | grep -i shared.yaml -m 1| awk -F ': ' '{print $2}' - | base64 -d 
  

  which will return output similar to:

  # Local custom settings
  mau_stats_only: true
  
  limit_usage_by_mau: False
  max_mau_value: 1000
  mau_trial_days: 2
  
  mau_appservice_trial_days:
    chatterbox: 0
  
  enable_registration_token_3pid_bypass: true
  

• Redeploy the micro8ks setup

  It is possible to redeploy microk8s by running the following command as root:

  snap remove microk8s
  

  This command does remove all microk8s pods and related microk8s storage volumes. Once this command has been run, you need to reboot your server - otherwise you may have networking issues. Add --purge flag to remove the data if disk usage is a concern.

  After the reboot, you can re-run the installer and have it re-deploy microk8s and Element Enterprise On-Premise for you.

Node-based pods failing name resoution

05:03:45:601 ERROR [Pipeline] Unable to verify identity configuration for bot-auditbot: Unknown errcode Unknown error
05:03:45:601 ERROR [Pipeline] Unable to verify identity. Stopping
matrix-pipe encountered an error and has stopped Error: getaddrinfo EAI_AGAIN synapse.prod.ourdomain
    at GetAddrInfoReqWrap.onlookup [as oncomplete] (node:dns:84:26) {
  errno: -3001,
  code: 'EAI_AGAIN',
  syscall: 'getaddrinfo',
  hostname: 'synapse.prod.ourdomain'
}

To see what Hosts are set, try:

kubectl exec -it -n element-onprem <pod name> getent hosts

So to do this on the adminbot-pipe-0 pod, it would look like:

kubectl exec -it -n element-onprem adminbot-pipe-0 getent hosts

and return output similar to:

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.0.1       localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
10.1.241.27     adminbot-pipe-0
192.168.122.5   ems.onprem element.ems.onprem hs.ems.onprem adminbot.ems.onprem auditbot.ems.onprem integrator.ems.onprem hookshot.ems.onprem admin.ems.onprem eleweb.ems.onprem

Node-based pods failing SSL

2023-02-06 15:42:04 ERROR: IrcBridge Failed to fetch roomlist from joined rooms: Error: unable to verify the first certificate. Retrying
MatrixHttpClient (REQ-13) Error: unable to verify the first certificate
at TLSSocket.onConnectSecure (_tls_wrap.js:1515:34)
at TLSSocket.emit (events.js:400:28)
at TLSSocket.emit (domain.js:475:12)
at TLSSocket. finishInit (_tls_wrap.js:937:8),
at TLSWrap.ssl.onhandshakedone (_tls_wrap.js:709:12) {
code: 'UNABLE TO VERIFY LEAF SIGNATURE

Drop into a shell on the pod

kubectl exec -it -n element-onprem adminbot-pipe-0 -- /bin/sh

Check it's abililty to send a request to the Synapse server

node

require=("http")
request(https://synapse.server/)

GitHub not sending events

You can trace webhook calls from your GitHub application under 'Settings / developer settings/ settings/GitHub Apps'Apps

Select your GitHub App

Click on Advanced and you should see queries issues by your app under Recent Deliveries