Contact Technical Support

This section describes how to get technical support and the terms on which it is available.

How to get technical support

If you cannot find a solution to your problem in the application documentation or other sources of information about the application, we recommend contacting Technical Support. Visit the Technical Support website to get in touch with our experts who will answer your questions about installing and using the application.

Before contacting Technical Support, please read the Technical Support rules.

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How to find information for Technical Support

After you inform Kaspersky Technical Support specialists about the problem, they may ask you to send a trace file or dump file.

Technical Support experts may also need additional information about the operating system and processes running on the device, as well as detailed reports of application components.

While diagnosing the problem, Technical Support experts may ask you to change the application settings to:

• activate functionality to receive advanced diagnostic information;
• perform more detailed configuration of individual application components that cannot be performed through the standard user interface;
• change settings for storing received diagnostic information;
• to configure the capture and storage of network traffic in a file.

Technical Support specialists will tell you all the information required to perform these actions (the sequence of steps, the settings to change, configuration files, scripts, advanced command line capabilities, debugging modules, special utilities, etc.), as well as the body of information received for diagnostic purposes. The received advanced diagnostic information is stored on the user device. This information is not automatically sent to Kaspersky.

The steps listed above should be performed only with the guidance of Technical Support specialists based on instructions they provide. Independently changing application files using means not described in the application documentation or not recommended by Technical Support specialists may lead to poor performance and failures in the application and operating system, reduced protection, as well as inaccessible and corrupted data.

About application trace files

A trace file of the Kaspersky application lets you track the execution of application commands step by step and pinpoint the stage at which the error occurs.

Application trace files are not generated by default. You can enable or disable generation of application trace files and define the level of detail in trace files in the command line via the general application settings and the application interface.

If you have enabled the generation of application trace files, these files are saved in /var/log/kaspersky/kfl/. Access to this directory requires root privileges.

Trace files are stored on the device as long as the application is in use, and are deleted permanently when the application is removed. Trace files are not sent to Kaspersky automatically.

Trace files are saved in a human-readable format. It is recommended to protect information from unauthorized access before sending it to Kaspersky.

Application trace file contents

Trace files contain the following general data:

• Event time.
• Number of the thread of execution.
• Application component that caused the event.
• Degree of event severity (informational event, warning, critical event, error).
• A description of the event involving command execution by a component of the application and the result of execution of this command.

Trace files may store the following information in addition to general data:

• The statuses of the application components and their operational data.
• Data on user activity in the application.
• Data on the hardware installed on the device.
• Data about all operating system objects and events, including information about user activity.
• Data contained in the objects of the operating system (for example, the contents of files that may contain any user personal data).
• Network traffic data (for example, the contents of the entry fields on a website, which may include bank card information or any other sensitive data).
• Data received from Kaspersky servers (such as the version of the application databases).
• Data on consumed CPU resources.
• Data on consumed RAM resources.
• Data about file read and write operations by applications.
• Data on the amount of cached information required for the application to work.

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How to configure tracing on the command line

You can configure application tracing settings using the TraceLevel, TraceFolder, TraceMaxFileCount, and TraceMaxFileSize settings in general application settings.

The TraceLevel setting lets you enable or disable application tracing and specify the level of detail in trace files. This setting can take the following values:

• Detailed – Generate a detailed trace file.
• MediumDetailed – Generate a trace file that contains informational messages and error messages.
• NotDetailed – Generate a trace file that contains error messages.
• None (default value) — Do not generate a trace file.

The TraceFolder settings lets you specify the directory where application trace files are stored. Default value: /var/log/kaspersky/kfl. If you specify a different directory, make sure that the user under which the Kaspersky application is running has read/write permissions for this directory. Root privileges are required to access the default trace files directory.

TraceMaxFileCount lets you specify the maximum number of application trace files. The setting can take values from 1 to 10000. Default value: 10.

TraceMaxFileSize lets you specify the maximum size of an application trace file (in megabytes). The setting can take values from 1 to 1000. Default value: 500.

You can edit the setting using command line options or a configuration file that contains all general application settings.

After changing the values of the TraceFolder, TraceMaxFileCount, or TraceMaxFileSize settings, you need to restart the application.

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How to create a trace file in the application interface

You can use the application interface to create application trace files and configure the level of detail of the trace files.

To create a trace file:

1. Open the main application window.
2. In the lower part of the main application window, click the Support button.

   The Support window opens.

3. Click the Tracing link to open the Tracing window
4. In the Level drop-down list, select the level of detail for the trace file.

   You are advised to clarify the required level of detail with a Kaspersky Technical Support specialists. The default value is Diagnostic (300).

5. Click the Enable button to start tracing.
6. Reproduce the situation which caused the problem.
7. Click the Disable button to stop tracing.

The generated trace files are saved in /var/log/kaspersky/kfl/.

About dump files

A dump file contains all information about the working memory of processes of the Kaspersky application at the time when the dump is created.

Dump files may contain personal data. We recommend making sure the information is protected from unauthorized access before sending it to Kaspersky.

No dump files are generated by default. You can enable or disable dumping in case of application failures.

If you enabled dumping, dump files are saved in /var/opt/kaspersky/kfl/common/dumps and /var/opt/kaspersky/kfl/common/dumps-user.

Root privileges are required to access dump files.

Dump files are stored on the computer as long as the application is in use, and are deleted permanently when the application is removed. Dump files are not sent to Kaspersky automatically.

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How to enable or disable dumping

If you use the command line to manage the application, you can enable or disable dumping in the kfl.ini configuration file.

The maximum number of dump files is limited.

Depending on the operating system settings, user dump files may not be created. Make sure that the system kernel is configured using sysctl kernel.yama.ptrace_scope=0.

Enabling or disabling dumping on the command line

To enable or disable dumping in the kfl.ini configuration file, do as follows:

1. Stop the Kaspersky application.
2. Open the /var/opt/kaspersky/kfl/common/kfl.ini file for editing.
3. Under [General], set the parameter value:
   • CoreDumps=yes: enable dumping in case of a failure.
   • CoreDumps=no: disable dumping.
4. If you want to change the default directory where dump files are saved, specify the path to the directory in the CoreDumpsPath option.
5. Start the Kaspersky application.

Collecting system performance metrics

The Kaspersky application affects the operating system. To help you analyze the impact, the application can collect metrics associated with application performance.

To configure the collection of operating system performance metrics, run the following command:

kfl-control [-J] --export-metrics [--period <interval in seconds between exports>|--interactive]

where:

• --period enables periodic output of results.
• --interactive enables interactive output (on the Enter key being pressed).

You can publish exported metrics to monitoring systems such as Prometheus and Zabbix. To integrate with monitoring systems, you can use a script that gets information from the application and publishes it to the monitoring system. To get the script, you can contact Technical Support.