SSSD supports two representations for specifying the debug level. The simplest is to specify a decimal value from 0-9, which represents enabling that level and all lower-level debug messages. The more comprehensive option is to specify a hexadecimal bitmask to enable or disable specific levels (such as if you wish to suppress a level).

Please note that each SSSD service logs into its own log file. Also please note that enabling “debug_level” in the “[sssd]” section only enables debugging just for the sssd process itself, not for the responder or provider processes. The “debug_level” parameter should be added to all sections that you wish to produce debug logs from.

In addition to changing the log level in the config file using the “debug_level” parameter, which is persistent, but requires SSSD restart, it is also possible to change the debug level on the fly using the sss_debuglevel(8) tool.

Currently supported debug levels:

0, 0x0010: Fatal failures. Anything that would prevent SSSD from starting up or causes it to cease running.

1, 0x0020: Critical failures. An error that doesn't kill SSSD, but one that indicates that at least one major feature is not going to work properly.

2, 0x0040: Serious failures. An error announcing that a particular request or operation has failed.

3, 0x0080: Minor failures. These are the errors that would percolate down to cause the operation failure of 2.

4, 0x0100: Configuration settings.

5, 0x0200: Function data.

6, 0x0400: Trace messages for operation functions.

7, 0x1000: Trace messages for internal control functions.

8, 0x2000: Contents of function-internal variables that may be interesting.

9, 0x4000: Extremely low-level tracing information.

9, 0x20000: Performance and statistical data, please note that due to the way requests are processed internally the logged execution time of a request might be longer than it actually was.

10, 0x10000: Even more low-level libldb tracing information. Almost never really required.

To log required bitmask debug levels, simply add their numbers together as shown in following examples:

Example: To log fatal failures, critical failures, serious failures and function data use 0x0270.

Example: To log fatal failures, configuration settings, function data, trace messages for internal control functions use 0x1310.

Note: The bitmask format of debug levels was introduced in 1.7.0.

Default: 0x0070 (i.e. fatal, critical and serious failures; corresponds to setting 2 in decimal notation)

1: Add a timestamp to the debug messages

0: Disable timestamp in the debug messages

Default: 1

1: Add microseconds to the timestamp in debug messages

0: Disable microseconds in timestamp

Default: 0

Location where SSSD will send log messages.

stderr: Redirect debug messages to standard error output.

files: Redirect debug messages to the log files. By default, the log files are stored in /var/log/sssd and there are separate log files for every SSSD service and domain.

journald: Redirect debug messages to systemd-journald

Default: not set (fall back to journald if available, otherwise to stderr)

Become a daemon after starting up.

Run in the foreground, don't become a daemon.

Specify a non-default config file. The default is /etc/sssd/sssd.conf. For reference on the config file syntax and options, consult the sssd.conf(5) manual page.

Do not start the SSSD, but refresh the configuration database from the contents of /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and exit.

Similar to “--genconf”, but only refresh a single section from the configuration file. This option is useful mainly to be called from systemd unit files to allow socket-activated responders to refresh their configuration without requiring the administrator to restart the whole SSSD.

Display help message and exit.

Print version number and exit.

Informs the SSSD to gracefully terminate all of its child processes and then shut down the monitor.

Tells the SSSD to stop writing to its current debug file descriptors and to close and reopen them. This is meant to facilitate log rolling with programs like logrotate.

Tells the SSSD to simulate offline operation for the duration of the “offline_timeout” parameter. This is useful for testing. The signal can be sent to either the sssd process or any sssd_be process directly.

Tells the SSSD to go online immediately. This is useful for testing. The signal can be sent to either the sssd process or any sssd_be process directly.