How to debug SSSD problems

This page is a draft only
It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.

This page provides a few steps to self-diagnose problems encountered when using SSSD. For additional information on using SSSD, see https://sssd.io.

1. Using the ping command, confirm you can you can contact the servers used when configuring SSSD.
2. Inspect the system logs /var/log/secure and /var/log/messages for suspicious log messages
3. If using TLS, verify that ...
   1. The directory /etc/openldap/cacerts contains the certificate
   2. The directory /etc/openldap/cacerts contains a hash symlink to the certificate
4. Enable SSSD debugging output
   1. Setting debug_level = 5 in /etc/sssd/sssd.conf.
   2. Next, restart SSSD by typing service sssd restart
   3. Finally, inspect the SSSD log files for any clues /var/log/sssd/*
5. Verify that the services work when not called by SSSD.
   • For example, using a LDAP server IP of 10.1.0.7 and a base of dc=hurr,dc=org, you could search using a simple anonymous bind and with mandatory TLS to confirm LDAP server connectivity using ldapsearch.

     ldapsearch -x -ZZ -H ldap://10.1.0.7 -b dc=hurr,dc=org

   • Using the same information, now try communicating without TLS

     ldapsearch -x -H ldap://10.1.0.7 -b dc=hurr,dc=org