FortiGate Troubleshooting Cheetsheet
Overview#
Why build a cheetsheet?
Cheetsheets are good to come back to when you’re in the thick of troubleshooting. Here I will be providing commands that have helped me throughout the years of working with FortiGate firewalls and where these commands can be useful.
This is document is meant to be updated frequently as the need arises.
Memory Conserve Mode#
I go over some troubleshooting tid-bits that are still relevant today related to Conserve Mode. Link can be found below.
Memory Conserve Mode is a feature on FortiGate firewalls where if memory hits a certain threshold. Through this it gives us some breathing room to assess what processes that could be taking up so much memory. If caught within the first stage of this. It might put a cap on network traffic. But, it will allow access to the management GUI.
General Look#
Some of the commands that can be used to get a brief review of the state of the system.
Show system information.
get system status
Show the current system time.
execute time
Show CPU and memory utilization.
get system performance status
List of Processes On FortiGates#
Here is a list of processes on FortiGates and what they do.
Getting CPU Usage#
These commands are useful for aquiring CPU usage on FortiGate firewalls.
Get an overview of the CPU usage on a FortiGate in real time.
diagnose sys top
Getting Memory Usage#
These commands are useful for aquiring memory usage on FortiGate firewalls.
Get a detailed memory breakdown of memory usage.
diagnose hardware sysinfo memory
Get the processes using memory in realtime. (Press SHIFT+M to look at
memory.)
diagnose sys top
Get the top 10 processes consuming memory on the FortiGate.
diagnose sys top-mem 10
For Fortinet Support Cases#
Generate a TAC report used to open a ticket with Fortinet Support.
execute tac report
Show system and application crashes.
diagnose debug crashlog read
Restarting A Service#
In the event that you need to restart a service on a FortiGate. Here are some useful commands.
Restarting the wireless controller daemon.
execute wireless-controller restart-acd
Restarting the IPS Engine Service.
diagnose test application ipsmonitor 99
Rebooting#
Sometimes the only option is to reboot the FortiGate. After saying [y]es to
the prompt. The firewall will reboot.
execute reboot