How to Debug Insights Installations and Upgrades?

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How to Debug Insights Installations and Upgrades?

Background

It is important to have some familiarity with the overall installation process. This consists of:

  1. Enable Insights on Orchestrator
    1. At this stage the Orchestrator MSI will create the database. If the database has already been created, this is OK but it must be empty
    2. After Insights is enabled, Orchestrator will start writing data to the Insights database as long as Orchestrator has an Insights license attached
  2. Install the looker portion of Insights.
    1. This is the data engine that powers Insights
    2. At this stage, we first run a pre-installation tool. This is ran on Windows and accomplishes a few things:
      1. It validates that the looker component will use a certificate that is trusted by the insights machine for HTTPS communication
      2. For Windows authentication, validate if valid kerberos credentials are used
      3. Export the Looker certificate. This can be convenient for some users who are more used to handling certificates in Windows environments.
    3. Run the Looker installation script
  3. Install the windows components.
    1. This consists of running the MSI.
    2. The IIS site is setup and we configure authentication for Insights through the Identity server.
The upgrade process is identical, with the exception of the Orchestrator step (which is only done once).

Diagnosing Issues

  1. This mostly only applies to the MSI version. For the Automation Suite version, if an error is encountered during enabling Insights, gather a support bundle
  2. How to debug an installation depends on which step the install is at. Go through them in the order of operations
  3. Enabling Insights on Orchestrator
    1. If this this step fails, go to the directory %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp (this location is not the same as %temp%) in the File Explorer
    2. Sort the files by Date Modified
    3. The latest file (it will be named something like MSIXXXX.LOG) is a log of the installer. Gather this log
    4. Additionally the installer should display the error. Please capture a screenshot.
    5. Alternatively, it is possible to run the Orchestrator MSI from the command line with the /l*v
      • ./UiPathOrchestrator.msi /l*v
  4. If the install fails on the looker portion:
    1. For the pre-installation tool, the logs are found under %temp%. Sort by date modified.
      1. The log name is InsightsLookerPreinstallationTool_.log
    2. If the installation fails during the execution of the Looker looker-installation.sh script, do the following:
      1. If the script has hung, just kill the script.
      2. Rerun the script using the following command: 
        • bash insights/looker-initialization.sh -k  2>&1 | tee lookerInstallLog.log
      3. If the script hangs again, kill it. It is still possible to capture the log lookerInstallLog.log
    3. For any other FAQ questions or general problems, capture screenshots and explain as best as possible the issue that is being faced.
    4. Finally, for all issues related to Linux, run: Linux Log Collector. This log collector capture system information as well as information about the application. Even if the install has not completed, it will still capture useful information. If any errors are faced during execution, that is OK. It probably is a result of the incomplete install.
  5. For the Insights windows component:
    1. Capture the msi logs. These will be in the directory %temp%.
      1. Sort by date modified.
      2. The default installer name will be MSIXXXX.LOG.
      3. Alternatively, run the installer with the /l*vx option.
        • ./InsightsInstaller.msi /l*v
    2. Take screenshots of any errors that are encountered.
    3. If the issue is related to the identity component, there are additional steps taken. There are two points where problems can occur with the Identity components
      1. When the identity access token is entered. (This is before executing the installation. See: Install Instructions)
      2. During installation, an error occurs and it the error states there were problems configuring the Identity component. The error thrown will be like "Failed to execute ConfigureIdentityTask"
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  1. If errors are encountered at this point, do two things:
    1. Gather the the Orchestrator event logs: Orchestrator Logs
      • This will be helpful because failures at this point are usually caused by the Identity component.
    2. If comfortable with using fiddler, run the installer while Fiddler is running. This step involves making HTTP API calls to Orchestrator and Fiddler can help identify problems. See: Fiddler
      • Fiddler should be ran as the same user running the install.
  1. The steps mentioned in this article are the logs that the UiPath Support team needs to diagnose issues. If after reviewing these logs the issue is still not clear, raise a support ticket.