Help diagnose why a machine went down unexpectedly

[garrett]

Cockpit should help someone diagnose why a machine unexpectedly went down.

1. Unclean shutdown happens (system crash, intentional power cycle, power outage, etc.)
2. Computer boots
3. User logs into Cockpit
4. Cockpit shows that the computer was shutdown unexpectedly
5. Cockpit provides a way to figure out what happened

My initial thought would be to:

• add a notice about the unexpected shutdown
• provide a link to the logs page that shows the previous system boot, sorted with the last entries at the top

While this wouldn't outright solve the problem, it would be a good way to at least let someone know that the system crashed and provide a minimal possible way to start debugging the issue.

[garrett]

I think the health area in my recent system overview mockup would be ideal for this.

[garrett]

This issue inspired by Nate Willis @ https://mastodon.social/@n8/102926615541596505

After talking with @andreasn about this topic earlier today, he pointed out some somewhat possible relevant links that might let us do even more than just point to last boot's logs:

• Debugging with Systemd @ Freedesktop.org
• Detect unclean shutdown with systemd? @ Reddit
• How to distinguish between a crash and a graceful reboot in RHEL 7
• Insights integration (Internal Jira link)

[martinpitt]

last -Fxn2 shutdown reboot is actually quite nice for that. Clean boot:

reboot   system boot  6.1.6-200.fc37.x Fri Jan 20 06:27:18 2023   still running
shutdown system down  6.1.6-200.fc37.x Fri Jan 20 05:51:06 2023 - Fri Jan 20 06:27:18 2023  (00:36)

and after reboot -ff:

reboot   system boot  6.1.6-200.fc37.x Fri Jan 20 06:28:59 2023   still running
reboot   system boot  6.1.6-200.fc37.x Fri Jan 20 06:27:18 2023   still running

i.e. we can check if the output has any ^shutdown line. Of course that's just for hard reboots -- if there was some less major trouble during shutdown, that would not show it. Nevertheless this is actually quite easy to implement in the health card, and it could lead to the Logs page for the previous boot.

[garrett]

It could be as something as simple as an entry in the health card.

Icon could be pf-icon-off (circle with vertical line inside, indicating power off). It'd be grey. It's not an error or a warning, necessarily... even though it could be. But it's something that could've happened due to power loss, someone tripping over a cord, or a crash or some other reason, and there's no way to know for sure.

It should probably be dismissable too.

Rough mockup would be something like this:

[Deeppjp116]

Hello,

I'm Deep. I'm interested in working on this issue. Could you please explain the problem and guide me on setting up the repository on my computer? I'm eager to contribute and give my best effort to resolve this. This will be my first valuable contribution. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

[garrett]

This issue is self-explanatory. It's detailed at the top of the issue. Show when a machine was recently shut down unexpectedly (like a crash or a power outage, for example).

Setting up Cockpit for development is detailed on our website:

• Page with all the dev docs: https://cockpit-project.org/external/wiki/Contributing.html
• Getting up and running; how to install Cockpit for development locally: https://cockpit-project.org/external/source/HACKING.html