This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2021-03-02. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Providing data to GitHub Support

Since GitHub Support doesn't have access to your environment, we require some additional information from you.

In this article

Creating and sharing diagnostic files

Diagnostics are an overview of a GitHub Enterprise Server instance's settings and environment that contains:

  • Client license information, including company name, expiration date, and number of user licenses
  • Version numbers and SHAs
  • VM architecture
  • Host name, private mode, SSL settings
  • Load and process listings
  • Network settings
  • Authentication method and details
  • Number of repositories, users, and other installation data

You can download the diagnostics for your instance from the Management Console or by running the ghe-diagnostics command-line utility.

Creating a diagnostic file from the Management Console

You can use this method if you don't have your SSH key readily available.

  1. From an administrative account on GitHub Enterprise Server, click in the upper-right corner of any page.
    Rocketship icon for accessing site admin settings
  2. In the left sidebar, click Management Console.
    Management Console tab in the left sidebar
  3. If prompted, type your Management Console password.
    Management Console unlock screen
  4. In the upper right of the Management Console, click Support.
    Button to access Support area
  5. Click Download diagnostics info.

Creating a diagnostic file using SSH

You can use this method without signing into the Management Console.

Use the ghe-diagnostics command-line utility to retrieve the diagnostics for your instance.

$ ssh -p122 admin@hostname -- 'ghe-diagnostics' > diagnostics.txt

Creating and sharing support bundles

After you submit your support request, we may ask you to share a support bundle with our team. The support bundle is a gzip-compressed tar archive that includes diagnostics and important logs from your instance, such as:

  • Authentication-related logs that may be helpful when troubleshooting authentication errors, or configuring LDAP, CAS, or SAML

  • Management Console log

  • github-logs/exceptions.log: Information about 500 errors encountered on the site

  • github-logs/audit.log: GitHub Enterprise Server audit logs

  • babeld-logs/babeld.log: Git proxy logs

  • system-logs/haproxy.log: HAProxy logs

  • elasticsearch-logs/github-enterprise.log: Elasticsearch logs

  • configuration-logs/ghe-config.log: GitHub Enterprise Server configuration logs

  • collectd/logs/collectd.log: Collectd logs

  • mail-logs/mail.log: SMTP email delivery logs

  • hookshot-logs/exceptions.log: Webhook delivery errors

For more information, see "Audit logging."

Support bundles include logs from the past two days. To get logs from the past seven days, you can download an extended support bundle. For more information, see "Creating and sharing extended support bundles."

Tip: When you contact GitHub Support, you'll be sent a confirmation email that will contain a ticket reference link. If GitHub Support asks you to upload a support bundle, you can use the ticket reference link to upload the support bundle.

Creating a support bundle from the Management Console

You can use these steps to create and share a support bundle if you can access the web-based Management Console and have outbound internet access.

  1. From an administrative account on GitHub Enterprise Server, click in the upper-right corner of any page.
    Rocketship icon for accessing site admin settings
  2. In the left sidebar, click Management Console.
    Management Console tab in the left sidebar
  3. If prompted, type your Management Console password.
    Management Console unlock screen
  4. In the upper right of the Management Console, click Support.
    Button to access Support area
  5. Click Download support bundle.
  6. Visit https://enterprise.github.com/support and sign in (if prompted).
  7. Visit https://enterprise.github.com/support/bundles/new and upload your support bundle.

Creating a support bundle using SSH

You can use these steps to create and share a support bundle if you have SSH access to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance and have outbound internet access.

Note: If you are using a Geo-replication configuration, or GitHub Enterprise Clustering, you should use the ghe-cluster-support-bundle command to retrieve the support bundle. For more information, see "Command-line utilities."

  1. Download the support bundle via SSH:
    $ ssh -p 122 admin@hostname -- 'ghe-support-bundle -o' > support-bundle.tgz
    For more information about the ghe-support-bundle command, see "Command-line utilities".
  2. Visit https://enterprise.github.com/support and sign in (if prompted).
  3. Visit https://enterprise.github.com/support/bundles/new and upload your support bundle.

Uploading a support bundle using your enterprise account

  1. Navigate to GitHub.com.

  2. In the top-right corner of GitHub.com, click your profile photo, then click Your enterprises.

    "Your enterprises" in drop-down menu for profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server

  3. In the list of enterprises, click the enterprise you want to view.

    Name of an enterprise in list of your enterprises

  4. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Settings.

    Settings tab in the enterprise account sidebar

  5. In the left sidebar, click Enterprise licensing.

    "Enterprise licensing" tab in the enterprise account settings sidebar

  6. Under "GitHub Enterprise Help", click Upload a support bundle.

    Upload a support bundle link

  7. Under "Select an enterprise account", select the support bundle's associated account from the drop-down menu.

    Choose the support bundle's enterprise account

  8. Under "Upload a support bundle for GitHub Enterprise Support", to select your support bundle, click Choose file, or drag your support bundle file onto Choose file.

    Upload support bundle file

  9. Click Upload.

Uploading a support bundle directly using SSH

You can directly upload a support bundle to our server if:

  • You have SSH access to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.
  • Outbound HTTPS connections over TCP port 443 are allowed from your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.
  1. Upload the bundle to our support bundle server:
    $ ssh -p122 admin@hostname -- 'ghe-support-bundle -u'

Creating and sharing extended support bundles

Support bundles include logs from the past two days, while extended support bundles include logs from the past seven days. If the events that GitHub Support is investigating occurred more than two days ago, we may ask you to share an extended support bundle. You will need SSH access to download an extended bundle - you cannot download an extended bundle from the Management Console.

To prevent bundles from becoming too large, bundles only contain logs that haven't been rotated and compressed. Log rotation on GitHub Enterprise Server happens at various frequencies (daily or weekly) for different log files, depending on how large we expect the logs to be.

Creating an extended support bundle using SSH

You can use these steps to create and share an extended support bundle if you have SSH access to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance and you have outbound internet access.

  1. Download the extended support bundle via SSH by adding the -x flag to the ghe-support-bundle command:
    $ ssh -p 122 admin@hostname -- 'ghe-support-bundle -o -x' > support-bundle.tgz
  2. Visit https://enterprise.github.com/support and sign in (if prompted).
  3. Visit https://enterprise.github.com/support/bundles/new and upload your support bundle.

Uploading an extended support bundle directly using SSH

You can directly upload a support bundle to our server if:

  • You have SSH access to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.
  • Outbound HTTPS connections over TCP port 443 are allowed from your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.
  1. Upload the bundle to our support bundle server:
    $ ssh -p122 admin@hostname -- 'ghe-support-bundle -u -x'

Further reading