NetWorker: Debug information levels

Summary: This article provides information about NetWorker debug levels, and how to enable debugging.

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Instructions

Premise:

User Message: Message that can be seen by the user in normal (localized) operation. It includes viewing of a log file, and output triggered by setting the (-v) verbosity command-line flag. User messages include generic logging, such as INFO, WARNING, ERROR, and so forth.
Debug Message: Message that is intended for in-depth analysis. Debugging is triggered by the (-D) command-line flag or the dbgcommand. Debug messages are not localized.

Messages flow in NetWorker:
 

Overview of NetWorker Logging 

A program that produces a message is called a speaker. Each speaker sends a message either to the UI, log file or to another program. NetWorker RAP resource `NSR Log` is created to manage each log file. A message can be sent to the UI directly using Remote Procedure Call (RPC). A log viewer (Viewer) reads UI intended or log messages and makes them visible to a user. Speakers log messages in a locale-independent format that viewers can translate later by the help of the Message catalog. The advantage is that users can view the UI simultaneously in different languages, and the same log file in various languages.

Logging:

General NetWorker service logging is written to the NetWorker daemon.raw:

  • Linux: /nsr/logs/daemon.raw
  • Windows (Default): C:\Program Files\EMC NetWorker\nsr\logs\daemon.raw
NOTE: Some NetWorker logging is written to .raw files. While some messages can be determined in a .raw file, many are unstructured data which is not human-readable (or difficult to translate). NetWorker provides the nsr_render_log utility to render .raw log files into human-readable output. See: NetWorker: How to use nsr_render_log to render .raw log files

Additional NetWorker logs are detailed in: NetWorker: Log Files and Locations

NetWorker Debug Levels:

The following table describes what information is available in the daemon.raw (or NetWorker logs) at the different debug levels when debugging NetWorker processes (daemons) or NetWorker command including Databases modules.

Debug Level
Debug information
Usage
0
No debugging (Disabled)
Default logging.
1
  • Processes which failed to spawn.
  • Domain Name System (DNS) and Reverse DNS lookup failures and failures to insert DNS entries to the cache.
  • Data Domain Deduplication related messaging
Occasional
2
  • save messages
  • recover messages
  • nsrclone (clone job) messages
Occasional
3
  • Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) messages.
  • DNS trace-related messages
Frequent
4
  • Includes the Process ID (PID) of all spawned processes.
  • NetWorker Server/Storage Node nsrmmd debug
Occasional
5
  • Module troubleshooting:
    • NetWorker Module for Microsoft (NMM)
    • NetWorker Module for Databases and Applications (NMDA)
  • Clustering specific messaging
Frequent
6
  • NetWorker server nsrindexd messaging
Occasional
7
  • Troubleshooting NetWorker server jobsdb issue.
  • Clustering-specific information.
  • Jobs failing to start due to parallelism constraints.
  • Debug of The NetWorker Management Console (gstd) service
Frequent
8
  • Extra debug messages then level 7
Occasional
9
  • NetWorker Support and engineering diagnostics.
  • NetWorker Support typically requests -D9 because it includes all debug levels (1 through 9).
  • Issues with Autochangers (jukebox).
Frequent
10-99
  • Only to be used when working with NetWorker support. This is typically only requested during NetWorker engineering engagements.
Rare

Debug levels are compounded, meaning that each debug level includes all levels prior to it. For example, when setting debug level 9, levels 1 through 9 are logged.

WARNING: Debugging should only be enabled while troubleshooting an issue. Setting debug on certain NetWorker processes can generate a lot of logging. Also, depending on the host and process there may be high activity on the processes with debug enabled. This introduces a risk to file space usage if left cleared. You must always monitor file space usage while debugging. When troubleshooting actions have concluded, disable debugging.

Enabling Debug:

Process-Specific debugging:

To enable NetWorker process-specific debugging, the dbgcommand is used to set a Debug level. The NetWorker dbgcommand allows greater debugging of specific NetWorker processes, without enabling global debug across all NetWorker processes. dbgcommand can be set on a PROCESS_NAME or PROCESS_ID (PID). Debugging set by dbgcommand is sent to the NetWorker daemon.raw log.

NetWorker host-specific processes: NetWorker Processes and Ports

From an elevated prompt on the NetWorker host, run:

dbgcommand -n PROCESS_NAME Debug=DEBUG_LEVEL
dbgcommand -p PROCESS_ID Debug=DEBUG_LEVEL

Overview of dbgcommand functions:

Option Value Usage
Debug=<value> >= 0 (See NetWorker Debug Levels) Enabling process debug.
Vflag=<value> >= 0 Setting verbosity level.
MsgID=<value> value = bool 0 or 1 Change the message ID printing of a running process.
PrintDevInfo N/A
  • For nsrd: Dump the current status of all drives and mmds.
  • For nsrmmgd: Dump the current status of all jukeboxes, devices, and pools
FlushDnsCache N/A Flush the process's DNS cache.

Example:

[root@nsr ~]# dbgcommand -n nsrd Debug=9
Process ID List : 869448
Processing PID:869448

Debug messaging is found in the daemon.raw:

0 01/30/2026 12:39:33 PM  nsrd NSR notice 01/30/26 12:39:33.163590 nsrd-D3 is_storage_node_active, hostname: nsr.amer.lan.
0 01/30/2026 12:39:33 PM  nsrd NSR notice 01/30/26 12:39:33.163697 nsrd-D5 lg_getnameinfo(): Entry in getnameinfo_cache  not found...
0 01/30/2026 12:39:33 PM  nsrd NSR notice 01/30/26 12:39:33.163722 nsrd-D7 lg_inet_getnameinfo(): ENTER input sa=192.168.9.152  input host buff=0x5604d67a8090 hostlen=1025     input service buff=(nil) servicelen=0    input flags=0x0008 NI_NAMEREQD=1 NI_NUMERICHOST=0 NI_NUMERICSERV=0 NI_NOFQDN=0
0 01/30/2026 12:39:33 PM  nsrd NSR notice 01/30/26 12:39:33.164319 nsrd-D7 lg_inet_getnameinfo(): EXIT rc=0      host str=nsr-sn.amer.lan       service str=null
0 01/30/2026 12:39:33 PM  nsrd NSR notice 01/30/26 12:39:33.164378 nsrd-D3 is_storage_node_active, hostname: nsr.amer.lan.
0 01/30/2026 12:39:33 PM  nsrd NSR notice 01/30/26 12:39:33.164405 nsrd-D5 lg_getnameinfo(): Entry in getnameinfo_cache  not found...
0 01/30/2026 12:39:33 PM  nsrd NSR notice 01/30/26 12:39:33.164424 nsrd-D7 lg_inet_getnameinfo(): ENTER input sa=192.168.9.152  input host buff=0x5604d67a8090 hostlen=1025     input service buff=(nil) servicelen=0    input flags=0x0008 NI_NAMEREQD=1 NI_NUMERICHOST=0 NI_NUMERICSERV=0 NI_NOFQDN=0
0 01/30/2026 12:39:33 PM  nsrd NSR notice 01/30/26 12:39:33.164867 nsrd-D7 lg_inet_getnameinfo(): EXIT rc=0      host str=nsr-sn.amer.lan       service str=null

Disabling debug:

[root@nsr ~]# dbgcommand -n nsrd Debug=0
Process ID List : 869448
Processing PID:869448


Using -D <Level>:

NetWorker commands can also be run with debug enabled. This is done by appending -D<DEBUG_LEVEL> to the command. For example, to set Debug level 9 on the save process run on a NetWorker client, update the client's backup command to save -D9.

For more information, see:

Additional Information

Affected Products

NetWorker

Products

NetWorker
Article Properties
Article Number: 000023070
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 30 Jan 2026
Version:  5
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