System Message Format

This chapter describes the Cisco IOS system message structure and error message traceback report.

This chapter contains the following sections:

•Message Structure

•Error Message Traceback Reports

Message Structure

The message includes the following information:

•Facility code

•Severity level

•Mnemonic code

•Description field

System error messages are structured as follows:

FACILITY-SEVERITY-MNEMONIC: Message-text

Facility Code

The facility code consists of at least two uppercase letters that indicate the facility to which the message refers. A facility can be a hardware device, a protocol, or a module of the system software. Table 1-1 lists the system facility codes.

Table 1-1 Facility Codes 

Code
Facility

ACL

Access control list

ACLSNOOPMAN

ACL Snooping

ARPSNOOPINGMAN

ARP Snooping

BUFFERMANAGER

Memory buffer management

CHASSIS

Chassis

COMMONHWACLMAN

Common hardware ACL management

COMMONSTUBMAN

ASIC-specific messages

DHCP_SNOOPING

DHCP snooping messages

DOT1X

802.1X-related port-based authentication

DTP

Dynamic Trunking Protocol

EBM

Ethernet bridge management

EC

EtherChannel

FLASH

Flash memory

GBICMAN

Gigabit Interface Converter (GBIC) manager

HW

Hardware

HWACLMAN

Hardware ACL management

HWL2MAN

Layer 2 hardware management

HWNETFLOWMAN

NetFlow management

HWPORTMAN

Hardware port management

IDBMAN

Interface descriptor block management

ILCPROTOCOLERROR

ILC protocol

IOSACLMAN

Cisco IOS ACL management

IOSDIAGMAN

Cisco IOS Diagnostic Manager

IOSDHCPSNOOPMAN

Cisco IOS DHCP snoop management

IOSIGMPSNOOPMAN

Cisco IOS IGMP snoop management

IOSINTF

Catalyst 4500 IOS interface operation

IOSIPROUTEMAN

Cisco IOS IP Route Manager

IOSL2MAN

Cisco IOS Layer 2 Manager

IOSL3MAN

Cisco IOS Layer 3 Manager

IOSMODPORTMAN

Cisco IOS module Port Manager

IOSREDUNDANCYMAN

Cisco IOS redundancy manager

IOSSYS

Catalyst 4500 IOS system

IOSSYSMAN

Catalyst 4500 IOS system management

IPROUTEMAN

Catalyst 4500 IOS IP routing management

L2MAN

Layer 2 hardware management

L3HWFORWARDING

Layer 3 hardware forwarding

LINECARDMGMTPROTOCOL

Line Card Management Protocol

LOGGING_REDIRECT

Logging Redirect ISSU

LPIPMAN

LAN Port IP (LPIP) dynamic host policies

PKTPROCESSING

Packet processing

PM

Port manager

PORTFANOUTASIC4X1000MAN

Port fan-out ASIC 4x1000 management

PORTFANOUTASIC8X1000HW

Port fan-out ASIC 8x1000 hardware

PORTFANOUTASIC8X100MAN

Port fan-out ASIC 8x100 management

QOS

Quality of Service

REDUNDANCY

Redundant supervisor

S2W

Calendar

SPD

SPD

SFF8472

Floating-point subsystem (SFF8472)

SPANTREE

Spanning Tree Protocol

SPANTREE_VLAN_SW

Spanning Tree VLAN switch management

STORM_CONTROL

Broadcast storm control

STORE

Memory

SUPERVISOR

Supervisor

SWITCH-QOS-TB

Switch QoS management

SW_DAI

Dynamic ARP inspection

SW-VLAN

Switch VLAN management

SWITCHINGENGINEMAN

Switching engine management

SWITCHMANAGER

Switch management

SWNETFLOWMAN

Software NetFlow management

SYSMAN

System management

TRANSCIEVER

TRANSCEIVER subsystem

UFAST

UplinkFast

VQPCLIENT

VLAN query protocol client

WATCHDOG

Watchdog timer


SEVERITY Level

The severity level is a single-digit code from 0 to 7 that reflects the severity of the condition. The lower the number, the more serious the situation. Table 1-2 lists the message severity levels.

Table 1-2 Message Severity Levels 

Severity Level
Description

0

Emergency—System is unusable

1

Alert—Immediate action required

2

Critical—Critical condition

3

Error—Error condition

4

Warning—Warning condition

5

Notification—Normal but significant condition

6

Informational—Informational message only

7

Debugging—Message that appears during debugging only


MNEMONIC Code

The MNEMONIC code uniquely identifies the error message. All mnemonics are all uppercase character strings.

Message Text

Message text is a text string that describes the error condition. The text string may contain detailed information about the event, including terminal port numbers, network addresses, or addresses that correspond to locations in the system memory address space. Because variable fields change from message to message, they are represented here by short strings that are enclosed in square brackets ([ ]). A decimal number, for example, is represented as [dec]. Table 1-3 lists the variable fields in messages.

Table 1-3 Representation of Variable Fields in Messages

Representation
Type of Information

[dec]

Decimal

[chars] or [char]

Character string

[hex]

Hexadecimal integer

[num]

Number


Sample System Error Messages

The following is an example of a system error message: 

Error Message    LINK-2-BADVCALL: Interface [chars], undefined entry point

Some error messages also indicate the card and slot reporting the error. These error messages are structured as follows:

CARD-SEVERITY-MSG:SLOT FACILITY-SEVERITY-MNEMONIC:
Message-text

•CARD is a code that describes the type of card reporting the error.

•MSG is a mnemonic indicating that this is a message. It is always shown as MSG.

•SLOT indicates the slot number of the card reporting the error. It is shown as SLOT followed by a number (for example, SLOT5).

Error Message Traceback Reports

Some messages describe internal errors and contain traceback information, which provides the stack trace of the function calls that resulted in the message. This trace helps the engineers track down the problem that is indicated in the message. You should include this information when you report a problem to your technical support representative.

The traceback report includes the following sample information:

-Process= "Exec", level= 0, pid= 17

-Traceback= 1A82 1AB4 6378 A072 1054 1860

The numbers that are printed in the message indicate which lines of code caused the message to occur.