FortiWLC – Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

  • Where Do I Start?
  • Error Messages
  • System Logs
  • System Diagnostics
  • Capturing Packets
  • FTP Error Codes

Where Do I Start?

We recommend that you start troubleshooting as follows:

Web UI or CLI? Problem Involves? Strategy
Web UI stations View station log history by clicking Monitor > Diagnostics > Station
Web UI radios View radio log history by clicking Monitor > Diagnostics > Radio

Where Do I Start?

Web UI or CLI? Problem Involves? Strategy
CLI stations View station-log history with one of these commands:

station-log show-mac=<affected MAC address> station-log show (if the MAC is not known)

If the problem is reproducible/occurring continually, log your terminal session, enter the station-log interface and add the affected MAC address using the command station add <MAC>. If you DON’T know the MAC address, enter event all all to capture all events for all MAC addresses.

CLI controller View controller-log history with the command diagnostics-controller

If the problem is reproducible/occurring continually, log your terminal session, enter the station-log interface with the command station-log, and add the affected MAC address using the command station add <MAC>. If you DON’T know the MAC address, type event all all to capture all events for all MAC addresses.

Error Messages

The following are common error messages that may occur either at the controller or at an AP.

Error Messages

Message Text Explanation
[07/20 13:02:11.122]

1m[35m**Warning**[0m

WMAC: Wif(0):SetTsf()

TSF[00000000:000006e3] ->

[00000033:77491cfd]thr[0000

0000:03938700]

May be observed on the AP command line or in trace log output from an AP after a full diagnostics gather.

The SetTsf() messages indicate that the AP has adjusted its TSF (TSF stands for Time Synchronization Function and is really the AP’s clock) forward by more than a certain threshold (the threshold is 5 seconds). The specific case above indicates that the AP has just booted up and adjusted its TSF value to its neighboring AP’s TSF value.

You can tell that the AP just booted because its current TSF is a low value (i.e. 6e3 microseconds). During initialization, the AP will synchronize its TSF to the TSF of its neighbors whenever the neighbors support a BSSID in common with this AP. That is a requirement to support Virtual Cell.

[07/31 14:01:33.506]

*****ERROR***** QOS: FlowMgr failed while processing flow request, reason= 5, srcMac[00:23:33:41:ed:27], dstMac[00:00:00:00:00:00].

May be observed in the controller’s CLI interface.

This error occurs when there is an attempt to either set up or remove an AP flow on a station that has started a phone call. “reason=5” means the cited station is not assigned to the AP where the attempt to set up/ remove the flow was made.

The presumed impact is that the stations (presumably phones) get lower than normal call quality since there are no QoS flows established on behalf of the MAC address.

Received non-local pkt on AP! This message may be observed on the serial console of a controller or in the dmesg.txt output included with a controller’s diagnostics. This message indicates that a Ethernet type 0x4001 or UDP port 5000 packet (L2 and L3 COMM respectively) was received by the controller’s Ethernet, but was not actually destined for the controller’s MAC or IP address.

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This entry was posted in Administration Guides, FortiWLC on by .

About Mike

Michael Pruett, CISSP has a wide range of cyber-security and network engineering expertise. The plethora of vendors that resell hardware but have zero engineering knowledge resulting in the wrong hardware or configuration being deployed is a major pet peeve of Michael's. This site was started in an effort to spread information while providing the option of quality consulting services at a much lower price than Fortinet Professional Services. Owns PacketLlama.Com (Fortinet Hardware Sales) and Office Of The CISO, LLC (Cybersecurity consulting firm).

One thought on “FortiWLC – Troubleshooting

  1. Johnny

    “station-log issues” command works but will not accept any of the arguments. 4200 controller running 8.4.1 software.

    Reply

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