Collecting sosreport on Linux Systems

The sos tool packages Linux configuration, logs and diagnostic information into an archive. It is available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Rocky Linux and Oracle Linux; Ubuntu and Debian also provide an sos package. Very old installations may use sysreport. Use the collection command supported by the installed sos version.

Collection Steps

1. Log in as root and confirm that the sos package is installed (if not installed, yum install sos or dnf install sos).

2. Execute the collection command:

   sosreport                 # RHEL 7 and earlier
   sos report                # New command for RHEL 8 and later

3. Press Enter to continue when prompted; when asked for your name (first initial and last name) and case number, you may enter actual values or press Enter to leave them blank.

4. Collection takes a few minutes. Upon completion, the screen will display the file location, for example:

   Your sosreport has been generated and saved in:
     /var/tmp/sosreport-hostname-123456-2025-03-05-abcdef.tar.xz
   The checksum is: ...

   Older versions are saved in /tmp, with a suffix possibly being .tar.bz2. Retrieve this file using tools such as WinSCP.

To run without interactive prompts, add the --batch parameter, for example sosreport --batch.