Troubleshooting

Stuck? Having a problem? Here are the steps to try before you submit a bug report.

  • Make sure you’re on the latest version. If you’re not on the most recent version, your problem may have been solved already! Upgrading is always the best first step.

  • Try older versions. If you’re already on the latest Fabric, try rolling back a few minor versions (e.g. if on 2.3, try Fabric 2.2 or 2.1) and see if the problem goes away. This will help the devs narrow down when the problem first arose in the commit log.

  • Try switching up your Paramiko. Fabric relies heavily on the Paramiko library for its SSH functionality, so try applying the above two steps to your Paramiko install as well.

    Note

    Fabric versions sometimes have different Paramiko dependencies - so to try older Paramikos you may need to downgrade Fabric as well.

  • Make sure Fabric is really the problem. If your problem is in the behavior or output of a remote command, try recreating it without Fabric involved:

    • Find out the exact command Fabric is executing on your behalf:

      • In 2.x and up, activate command echoing via the echo=True keyword argument, the run.echo config setting, or the -e CLI option.

      • In 1.x, run Fabric with --show=debug and look for run: or sudo: lines.

    • Execute the command in an interactive remote shell first, to make sure it works for a regular human; this will catch issues such as errors in command construction.

    • If that doesn’t find the issue, run the command over a non-shell SSH session, e.g. ssh yourserver "your command". Depending on your settings and Fabric version, you may want to use ssh -T (disable PTY) or -t (enable PTY) to most closely match how Fabric is executing the command.

  • Enable Paramiko-level debug logging. If your issue is in the lower level Paramiko library, it can help us to see the debug output Paramiko prints. At top level in your fabfile (or in an appropriate module, if not using a fabfile), add the following:

    import logging
    logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)
    

    This should start printing Paramiko’s debug statements to your standard error stream. (Feel free to add more logging kwargs to basicConfig() such as filename='/path/to/a/file' if you like.)

    Then submit this info to anybody helping you on IRC or in your bug report.