PowerEdge: How to analyze the sosreport obtained from the Linux Operating System

Summary: Guidance on how to evaluate the sosreport obtained from your system; below is a concise breakdown of the directions (Folder locations and its description) collected in the sosreport.

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Instructions

The sosreport command is a tool that collects configuration details, system information, and diagnostic information from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server.

  • The report includes: Running kernel version, loaded modules, system and service configuration files.
  • The command also runs external programs to collect further information, and stores this output in the resulting archive.
  • The sosreport is used to acquire information about the operating system environment for the purposes of troubleshooting and diagnostics.

What is an sos report and how to create one in Red Hat Enterprise Linux? https://access.redhat.com/solutions/3592This hyperlink is taking you to a website outside of Dell Technologies.


The folder locations and description listed below are useful for quick references once we have extracted the sosreport.

Folder Location in sosreport Description
sos_commands/hardware/dmidecode Collects System Hardware Information - Service Tag, BIOS Firmware version, Installed CPU, and Memory Information
sos_commands/kernel/uname -a Installed Kernel release version
sos_commands/host/hostname Hostname
sos_commands/host/uptime The current time while the log was created, how long the system has been running, how many users are logged on, and the system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes.
sos_commands/memory/free -m  or /proc/meminfo System Memory Information
proc/cpuinfo CPU information
sos_commands/last Last reboot or Shutdown
/etc/os-release or /etc/redhat-release Installed operating system version
sos_commands/networking/ethtool -i <network interface name> Ethernet Driver version
proc/net/bonding Network bond information
sos_commands/rpm Installed RPM Packages
/var/log/dmesg System boot up log messages - Includes driver version of PERC, Network cards and so on.
sos_commands/block/lsblk Lists block devices | partitions.
sos_commands/multipath Multipath Configuration Information
sos_commands/date Date when the report is captured.
sos_commands/filesys/df -al Displays free disk space available on a file system
sos_commands/firewalld/firewall-cmd Firewall Status
sos_commands/services Checkconfig list and runlevel information
sos_commands/networking/ip -o addr IP Address Information
sos_commands/pci/lspci -v PCI Devices list
sos_commands/subscription_manager Red Hat Subscription Information
boot/grub2/grub.cfg Grub information
sos_commands/process List of active process information while the report was generated.
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<device-name> Ethernet Configuration File
sos_commands/ata/smartctl -a <device-name> Smartctl test output on Hard Drives
/var/log/messages Stores all the syslog messages that are not explicitly configured for other rsyslog locations.
/var/log/secure Stores security and authentication-related messages and errors
/var/log/cron Stores log files that relate to periodically performed tasks.
/var/log/boot.log or /var/log/dmesg Stores log files that relate to system start-up.
/var/log/sa System Activity Reports (sar)
/var/log/maillog Stores mail server-related messages and errors.
/var/crash vmcore file
sos_commands/networking/ethtool -S <network interface name> NIC statistics

Affected Products

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 8, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15, Ubuntu Server LTS
Article Properties
Article Number: 000211068
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 25 Nov 2025
Version:  6
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