Google Apps Toolbox

Browserinfo is a browser-based debugging tool to capture client side info and look for obvious issues which may impact their experience on the internet.

With this tool, you can:

• Detect timezone offset
• Collect important browser parameters
• Detect installed plugins
• Check connectivity:
  • Calculate HTTP latency to various Google services
  • Detect if firewall rules could be impacting connectivity to core services

Using this information, you can quickly narrow down root cause for connectivity issues.

The Message Header Analyzer extracts delivery and route information (server hops, message delays) from message headers. A copy of a sample header and the analysis output is displayed below. Learn how to retrieve message headers.

This tool can help you detect simple server clock and routing misconfigurations and could at times help you understand the source of consistent delays in deliveries.

Example

Check MX looks for common MX Domain Name System (DNS) records misconfigurations which users often make. To do this, it queries DNS for the available domain data and tries to establish test SMTP connection to find out current status of the domain.

Checks done by CheckMX include (but are not limited to):

• General DNS sanity checks - is number of NS servers more than 1? Are they all reachable? Do they know about each other? Are they in sync?
• Google Apps related - do MX records for the domain match recommended set up? Are there any mistakes? Are there any excess servers that normally should not be there?
• “Subtle” problems - are there any mail exchangers set up on IP addresses corresponding to A-records? Are there CNAME records for ‘bare domain’ exist? Do DNS responses fit into standard UDP response?

After completing all these checks, CheckMX provides a summary in form of Green/Yellow/Red flag for a domain which demonstrates whether mailflow should be working smoothly or there might be any problems or may even flagging that mailflow is most likely broken and experience problems or complete outage.

Relayhost setup

Relayhost setup is most tricky. It requires an expert knowledge to set up and maintain. Also, due to various reasons, CheckMX can not properly distinguish it from broken setup so you won't be able to get a "Green" status from it. The relayhost setup is such that mail server located outside Google collects mail and then forwards it to Google servers. The rule of thumb is: if you do not know what relayhost is or do not know of any other servers managing your mail flow rather that Google servers, you do not have a relayhost setup. In this case you should treat the CheckMX message, "Relayhost configuration detected," as a "Red" flag. Learn more about relayhost setup.

With Encode/Decode, you can debug web related issues with a set of encoding and decoding functions, including:

• Base64 Encode
• Base64 Decode
• URL Encode
• URL Decode
• MD5 Hash

The Log Analyzer is an easy-to-use log-parser which can help explain errors and warnings in log files generated by some of the Google products running in your network. To use the tool paste or upload the log file from the Google product and select the right log source.

After analysis is done, the tool will either show that there was nothing to report, or it will come back with observations extracted from the logs and explanations for each. In some cases it may even contain links to other pages where you can find more information.

How to get the logs

Chrome OS

The easiest way to retrieve a log file with most of the important logs from a chrome device is by following these instructions:

1. On your Chrome OS device, go to chrome://net-internals/#chromeos
2. Click Store Debug Logs

At this point, it will create a file which starts with “debug-log_” in your file manager. Use ctrl+M to access the file manager. You can use this file for analysis.

Google Drive

• On Microsoft^® Vista and Windows 7, you'll find the log file here: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Google\Drive\sync_log.log
• On Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, the log file is here: C:\Documents and settings\[username]\Local settings\Application Data\Google\Drive\sync_log.log
• On Mac^®, the log file is here: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Drive/sync_log.log

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

• On Vista and Windows 7, you'll find the trace files in: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Google\Google Apps Sync\Tracing\
• On Windows XP, you'll find the trace files in: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Apps Sync\Tracing\

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange

• On Vista and Windows 7, you'll find your log file here: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Google\Google Apps Migration\Tracing\
• On XP, you'll find your log file here: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Apps Migration\Tracing\

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook

• On Vista and Windows 7, you'll find your log file here: C:\Users\your-user-name\AppData\Local\Google\Google Apps Migration\Tracing\ClientMigration
• On Windows XP, you'll find your log file here: C:\Documents and Settings\[user-name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Apps Migration\Tracing\ClientMigration

Google Apps Directory Sync (GADS)

1. Set log level to Trace (Configure > Log File > Log level = Trace)
2. Set the log file name to something new and set a location (default is 'sync.log' in the install directory)
3. Run GADS with the new file
4. Upload the newly generate log to log analyzer

Google Apps Password Sync (GAPS)

You can use the GAPS support tool to automatically gather GAPS logs and troubleshooting information from all of your Domain Controllers at once.