What is a sosreport and how do I run it?

[rajeevmahura]

The command sosreport is a tool that collects information about a system, such as what kernel is running, what drivers are loaded, and various configuration files for common services. It also does some simple diagnostics against known problematic patterns.

To run a sosreport, the sos package must be installed. If the system is registered with Red Hat Network (RHN) it can be installed using up2date command for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4:
# up2date sos

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, use the yum command:
# yum install sos

If the system is not registered with RHN, install the sosreport package from the CDs using RPM:
# rpm -Uvh sos-<version>.<arch>.rpm

Once the package has been installed, issue the following command from a command prompt:
# sosreport

Once completed, sosreport will generate a compressed tar file in /tmp.