Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot the errors came during template validation or apply phase, we can enable the logging with debug level, so we can take a look what is going on in background of template validation and apply phase.

To enable the debug level logs, we just need to make sure we pass either --debug or -d flag to proffer command.

Example:

$ proffer validate --debug example.com
    or
$ proffer validate -d example.com

Similarly, we can use the debug flag in apply command also.

$ proffer apply --debug example.com
    or
$ proffer apply -d example.com

How to read the logs more effectively to understand what info they represent

Each message printed by proffer has two parts and they are separated by |.

• Prefix :

  It represents the operation type that is currently running. For example

    + validate-syntax | Template syntax is valid.
  

  validate-syntax is representing that, we are running validate-syntax operation.

• Data : It represents the message send by the current running operation in a particular log level/ color. Data in green color: Information message. Data in Bright Green color: Success message. Data in Bright Yellow color: Warning/Notice message. Data in Red color: Error message. Data in Bright Red color: Fatal/Panic message. With this kind of data , program will exit with status code 1.

    - aws-copyami | Invalid AWS AMI ID [ami-07898754ede9e4a342] passed in [config.source.amiFilters] property of Resource: [Copy AMI To Diff AWS Regions]
  

  in above logs, aws-copyami tells that we are applying aws-copyami operation and the Data part in Bright Red Color tells that we got an fatal error that caused program to broke with given error message.

Template debugging:

When we run the proffer validate or apply command , it generates a output.yml file in the same location from where we are running the proffer. We can take a look at this file to check if the template resolved the dynamic information (env vars) or not.