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Debugging Kerio Connect Crashes

Author: Vladyslav Velychko Updated

Overview

You observe that your Kerio Connect application/service is crashing or displaying sluggish and degraded performance with a high CPU or RAM load (95-100%).

Upon reaching the Hardware limitations, Kerio Connect may be generating crash dumps.

 

Solution

Prerequisites: Kerio Connect installed on Linux, macOS or Windows.

The Kerio Connect service has crashed unexpectedly, generating core process dumps. The dump files are located in different folders depending on the guest OS. Please see Additional Information for details for Linux and macOS. 

The locations to look for the crash dumps are:

  • Windows: Windows machines will generate a .dmp file in the following locations:
    • C:\Program Files\Kerio\MailServer
    • %TEMP%\Kerio\crash\
  • Linux: The naming format is core.PID or simply core, Check the following locations:
    • /opt/kerio/mailserver
    • /var/crash
  • MacOS:  
    • /usr/local/kerio/mailserver : Kerio will generate a core file here
    • /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ : Kerio will generate a .crash file here
    • /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/

Linux

Note: The procedure below might also be applicable for macOS, as it is a part of Unix-family OS, however, the .crash file generated by macOS is a cleartext file containing the debugging analysis.

  1. Transfer core.PID file to your Kerio Connect server running on Linux OS. You can use the wget tool to pull it from the public link. Alternatively, you can transfer it using the SCP tool.

  2. Install the gdb package. For Debian/Ubuntu distros, run the command:

    sudo apt install gdb

  3. Open the Kerio Connect installation directory.

    cd /opt/kerio/mailserver

  4. Run the command below to enter gdb Debug mode:

    gdb ./mailserver <path_to_core_file>

    You will receive a similar output.

    108.png
  5. Run the bt full command to expedite Backtrace deeper. To exit gdb, run the quit command.

    109.png
  6. Once the necessary info is gathered, elevate the issue to the Engineering team.

 

Windows

  1. Follow the MS guide on how to read Windows memory dumps.

  2. Alternatively, download and install Visual Studio Community edition and open the user_<number>.dmpfile. You can install Windows Debugging Tools. Please note that the latest Windows SDK should be installed as part of the VS installation for the .dmp files to be recognized.

  3. You will receive a similar output.

    110.png

 

 

Additional Information

While crashing, Kerio Connect generates a Crash Dump file. Crash dumps get stored in the same directory that has your configuration file. The name will vary based on OS:

On a Linux system :

It may be named core.PID, where PID is the process ID that crashed (for example core.7914) or simply core. It might be located in the /cores folder as well.

The main Kerio Connect processes are:
 ​avserver
 spamserver
 keriobda
 mailserver
 java​

112.png

If the server is crashing because of Kerio Connect, the dmesg (also present in the support information file gathered from Unix servers) will show PID of the Process + Name of faulty process. For example, if Antivirus caused a crash, it will show something like this:

[6773371.959047] avserver invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x2420848, order=0, oom_score_adj=0
[6773371.959054] avserver cpuset=/ mems_allowed=0
<CALL TRACE>
[6773371.959550] Out of memory: Kill process 22031 (avserver) score 324 or sacrifice child
[6773371.964829] Killed process 22031 (avserver) total-vm:1022968kB, anon-rss:683648kB, file-rss:324kB

Another example is for the crash due to a lack of RAM. It is advisable to increase the amount of RAM even if the server still meets the Server Requirements. Example dmesg output:

[15680066.795853] Out of memory in UB 4137140: OOM killed process 29304 (mailserver) score 0 vm:11770092kB, rss:7005624kB, swap:0kB

The OOM Killer utility job is to free up resources when there is not enough memory for the OS to load any new applications. More information is available in the 3-party article: the Linux OOM Killer

 

On macOS

For macOS, Kerio should generate a core file in the /usr/local/kerio/mailserver, and a .crash file in the CrashReporter folder. The .crash file generated by macOS is an actual cleartext file containing the explicit debugging analysis. 
The DiagnosticReports folder contains info about hardware resources and other environmental things. In investigating crashes, getting something from that folder may be useful, however, the actual .crash files will be located in the Crash Reports section, as mentioned above.

 

Related Articles

Troubleshooting Performance Issues in Kerio Connect

Kerio Connect Service Crashes and Restarts

 

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