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Troubleshooting

Using the Python Debugger

One of the most powerful tools when debugging the Python portions of a ZenPack is the Python debugger (pdb). With pdb you can set breakpoints in your code. When the breakpoints are hit, you get a (pdb) prompt that has full access to examine the stack and any local or global variables.

To set a breakpoint in your code you add the following line.

import pdb; pdb.set_trace()

As with any code change, you must restart the Zenoss process that executes the code in question.

Saving Data

ZenPackLib v2.0 also adds a decorator, writeDataToFile, that can be used to save real-world results that your plugins will be processing. This data can then be used to determine why a plugin is not behaving as expected or to create your own unit tests.

In order to use this decorator, import it from the ZenPackLib ZenPack:

from ZenPacks.zenoss.ZenPackLib.lib.helpers.utils import writeDataToFile

Then use as a decorator for your plugin’s process function. writeDataToFile is generic and can be used on any python function or class method. It does not pickle file or logger objects. You can also specify keywords which, when matched against an object’s attributes, will cause an object not to be pickled.

class MyPlugin(PythonPlugin):
    @writeDataToFile(keywords=['zCommandPassword', 'windows_password'])
    def process(self, device, results, log):
        '''Perform device specific processing on modeler plugin results'''
        rm = self.relMap()
        # Add data to relationship map
        rm.attr1 = results.attr1
        rm.attr2 = results.attr2
        return rm

The save functionality is disabled unless you use the ZPL_DUMP_DATA environment variable. Be sure to only use in limited runs or you will end up with a large number of pickle files.

export ZPL_DUMP_DATA=1; zenmodeler run -d mydevice; unset ZPL_DUMP_DATA

The pickle file(s) will be written to your /tmp folder using the class name and function name with current timestamp. Using the definition from above, the file name would be MyPlugin_process_XXXXXX.pickle where XXXXXX is the time at which the data was processed. Assuming device has either a zCommandPassword or windows_password attribute, the self, device, and log objects will not be pickled.

Known Issues

  • When dumping existing event classes using the zenpacklib script with --dump-event-classes option, some transforms and/or explanations may show as either unformatted text within double quotes or as formatted text within single quotes. This is due to how the Python yaml package handles strings. Either of these two formats are acceptable when used in zenpack.yaml.

  • ZenPacks using earlier versions of ZenPackLib logged template changes to the console during installation. These messages might have disturbed some users due to their wording and logging as ERROR status. These have been revised and now log as informational, but the old format will be displayed when upgrading from a pre-ZenPacklib 2.0 ZenPack to one using the latest version. Subsequent installs will use the newer format.