Required Information When Reporting Issue to Lithium Support

Overview

We strive to provide the highest level of support and fix your issues as soon as possible. If you provide all of the required details when reporting an issue, we can avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and resolve your problem much more promptly.

Required Information

Please make sure to provide detailed information about the incident when submitting a ticket. This detailed information helps our agents to investigate the issue and identify the root cause. Following the below guidelines also helps to expedite the processing of your ticket:

• Meaningful Title: Please make sure to provide an appropriate title for the ticket, which captures the essence of the problem and helps to identify it quickly.
• Priority: For effective incident management, the severity/priority levels must be well-defined. Please refer to the Priority Guidelines when selecting the priority of your ticket.
• Problem Description: Please provide a clear description of your problem, using simple language and eliminating variables. Indicate the Who, What, and When of the problem.
  Examples: 
  • Describe whether the issue affects just one or many users.
  • Let us know if there were any changes implemented before the issue occurred.

We can break down the required information into the following categories:

• Priority Guidelines
• General Useful Information for Lithium SMSC Troubleshooting
• Minimum Information Required for Specific Cases

Priority Guidelines

Urgent: This describes critical problems severely affecting service, traffic, billing, and maintenance capabilities. These problems require immediate corrective action, regardless of the time of day or day of the week. We provide continuous support until resolution.

High: Issues with a high priority are major problems causing a condition that severely affects system operation, maintenance, and administration. These problems require immediate attention, but the urgency is less than critical because of a lesser immediate or impending effect on any of the following:

• System performance
• Customers
• Company operations or revenue

Normal: Issues with a normal priority include minor problems that do not significantly impair the functioning of the system and do not seriously affect the core service.

Low: Low priority requests do not affect service or hardware. This includes items such as questions about upgrades, current or future features, or documentation requests.

General Useful Information for Lithium SMSC Troubleshooting

The following list provides the instructions to retrieve logs, configuration files, and the output of certain commands that can help to investigate your issue. Not all items from the list are mandatory when creating a support ticket. However, the following information is helpful when investigating various problems: 

• Syslog
• The tp_walkall command output
• Log records
• Traces

You may need to provide one or more of the following for your ticket:

1. The syslog file located at /var/log/messages.

   Note: Please do not filter the messages.

2. The file that results from running the command tp_walkall > tp_walkall_[server name].txt.

   Note: Not applicable to MGR.

3. The log records that are located at MGR GUI > Logging > Messages > Search.

4. The common_config.txt file from the /usr/TextPass/etc directory.

5. The hostname_config.txt file from the /usr/TextPass/etc directory.

6. The Core dumps from the /var/TKLC/core directory if available.

7. The Wireshark traces for the time when the issue occurred.

8. The output of the top command, which displays the CPU and memory usage.

9. The output of the df -kh command, which displays the disk space usage.

10. The detailed test case description (lab) or failure scenario (for the production environment).

11. The backup of the MGR GUI (MGR dump).

12. The latest MGR error logfile from the /var/TextPass/MGR/logs directory.

13. The MGR changelogs: the tp_mgr_change_log.txt and tp_mgr_error_log.txt files that are located at /var/TextPass/MGR/.

14. The license file in use that is located at /var/TextPass/etc and the output of the tp_system command.

15. The NDB cluster logs and MySQL error logs.

16. MySQL configuration files: /etc/my.cnf and /var/lib/mysql-cluster/config.ini.

17. The output of the tp_session command, which is used to troubleshoot HUB issues (SMPP/UCP).

18. The output of the tp_status command, which displays the current status of the system.

19. The SAR logs for the day when the problem occurred.

20. The status of this process: as a textpass user, please run ps -ef | grep -i <process_name>, e.g., ps -ef | grep -i stv for STV.

21. The output of the command stv_self_test, as a textpass user.

22. Lithium version and version of the components installed using tp_install_mgr --check; echo "ExitStatus: $?" 

Minimum Information Required for Specific Cases

When reporting specific issues, please make sure to provide the items described below, according to your case. The support agent may request additional information from the list above.

• Specific subscriber complaints: provide items 1, 2, and 3.
• Signaling-related problems: provide items 1, 2, and 7.
• MGR-related problems: provide items 1, 11, 12, and 13.
• Database-related problems: provide items 1, 15, and 16.
• Performance or disk issues: provide items 1, 2, 8, 9, and 19.
• SMSC process restart: provide items 1, 2, and 6.
• Application connection problems: provide items 1, 2, 7, and 17.
• STV-related problems: provide items 1, 20 (with stv as process_name), and 21.

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