Troubleshooting

Introduction

This guide steps you through how to troubleshoot issues with ownCloud’s iOS App for iPhone and iPad. Specifically, it shows how to configure logging, and troubleshoot using mitmproxy and Charles for iOS.

Logging

Locating App Logs and iOS App Crash Logs

There are two kinds of logs recorded in different locations:

The Log Created by the iOS App

See Capturing App Debug Logs for how to enable app logs. On the same screen where you enable logging, you can access the log files. Touch Share log file which opens a new screen with all the log files created. To export the selected logs, tap the share button on the top right-hand side of the screen.

The iOS Crash Log

If the iOS app isn’t responding or is crashing, iOS saves a crash log on the device. You can find the crash log on your device under Settings  Privacy  Analytics  Analytics Data. The log entries are sorted alphabetically with the app name, the date and a computer-readable timestamp. Tap the log of choice to open the crash log and export it with the share button on the top right-hand side of the screen.

Capturing App Debug Logs

Effectively debugging software requires as much relevant information as possible. Log output can help with tracking down problems and, if you report a bug, log output can help to resolve an issue more quickly. To assist the ownCloud support personnel, please try to provide as many relevant logs as possible. You can do this by enabling and fully configuring the iOS app’s logging functionality via:

  • Enabling logging with Settings  Logging  Enable Logging

  • Setting the log level to "Debug" or "Info"

  • Enable:

    • Log HTTP requests and responses

    • Standard error output

    • Log file

Once these have been enabled:

  • Click Browse at the end of the same settings page

  • Click Delete all in the following settings page

  • Perform the steps to reproduce the error

  • Go back to the Logging settings click Browse and click Share log file (the rectangle with the arrow next to the log file)

All iOS App logging settings enabled and set
ios-app-settings-logging

→
ios-app-settings-logging
Button to clear the logs

ios-app-settings-logging

ownCloud’s Log File

ownCloud server maintains an ownCloud-specific log file. You can view the file using either the web interface or you can open it directly from the file system in your ownCloud server’s data directory.

You can check if it is enabled through the Log configuration panel, which is available under Settings  General (Admin). On that page, you can adjust the log level. We recommend that you set it to a verbose level such as either debug or info.

Configuring logging in ownCloud server.
Figure 1. Configuring logging in ownCloud server.

Web Server Log Files

It can be helpful to view your web server’s error log file to isolate any ownCloud-related problems.

The ownCloud iOS app sends the X-REQUEST-ID header with every request. You’ll find the X-REQUEST-ID in the owncloud.log, and you can configure your webserver to add the X-REQUEST-ID to the logs. Here you can find more information at Request Tracing

Some helpful files include the following:

error_logx

Maintains errors associated with PHP code.

access_log

Typically records all requests handled by the server; handy as a debugging tool, because the log line contains information specific to each request and its result.

Below, you can find where the error logs are typically located, based on operating system and web server.

Operating System Web Server File Location

Linux

Apache

/var/log/apache2

NGINX

/var/log/nginx

Lighttpd

/var/log/lighttpd

Windows

Apache

The Windows Event Log or in the logs directory relative to the Apache installation directory.

NGINX

Commonly in the logs directory relative to the NGINX installation directory.
You can always check your web server’s configuration to know where the log files are located.

Recording the Screen

In iOS 11 or later, you can create a screen recording to better illustrate an error. If you are not familiar with creating one, follow these instructions.

Debugging Tools

If you need to check the traffic between ownCloud and the iOS App, we recommend two tools:

mitmproxy

mitmproxy is an interactive man-in-the-middle proxy for HTTP and HTTPS with a console interface. At ownCloud, we use it a lot to investigate every detail of HTTP requests and responses.

mitmproxy sample output

Charles for iOS

The Charles proxy for iOS works similarly to mitmproxy. However, it’s more user-friendly, runs on the iOS device, and has a beautiful UI. It also supports split view on iPads so that you can work with the ownCloud iOS app and Charles side-by-side.