Bug ID 602508: Capture historical changes of config files

Last Modified: Sep 13, 2023

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP TMOS(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
11.6.1, 11.6.2, 11.6.3, 11.6.3.1, 11.6.3.2, 11.6.3.3, 11.6.3.4, 11.6.4, 11.6.5, 11.6.5.1, 11.6.5.2, 11.6.5.3, 12.0.0, 12.0.0 HF1, 12.1.0 HF1, 12.0.0 HF2, 12.1.0 HF2, 12.0.0 HF3, 12.0.0 HF4, 12.1.1 HF1, 12.1.1 HF2, 12.1.2 HF1, 12.1.2 HF2, 12.1.0, 12.1.1, 12.1.2, 12.1.3, 12.1.3.1, 12.1.3.2, 12.1.3.3, 12.1.3.4, 12.1.3.5, 12.1.3.6, 12.1.3.7, 12.1.4, 12.1.4.1, 12.1.5, 12.1.5.1, 12.1.5.2, 12.1.5.3, 12.1.6

Fixed In:
13.0.0

Opened: Jul 01, 2016

Severity: 4-Minor

Symptoms

Sometimes errors can be traced to config file changes, but it is impossible to infer what the config file had at the time of the problem.

Impact

When investigating problems on BIG-IP systems, the configuration files pose the biggest impact on how the system behaves. Having a historical recreation of the configuration files can help immensely in figuring out the problem.

Conditions

A config file is changed and the system starts to have issues. The issues get reported, but the config file is changed again, so there is no way to determine what in the configuration can reproduce the issue.

Workaround

Copy config files into a backup directory every time a change is made and saved.

Fix Information

The fix keeps a diff every time a config file is changed and this is then saved in a qkview that gets uploaded to iHealth. In post analysis, it is possible to reconstruct any of the captured config differences based on timestamps. This feature is enabled by default and cannot be disabled. Even huge changes occurring all the time will max out after 250 versions, so the file usage cannot grow indefinitely. In addition, the diffs usually take up very little space.

Behavior Change

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips