So, you need to know which file SuiteCRM is trying to load from where? Or why your customization file isn’t getting picked up? Or what files Studio has changed? Here’s what I would call an advanced debugging/troubleshooting technique.

Apart from anything you can find from the logs, sometimes you just wish you could see exactly which disk accesses were being made. Well, you can.

In Windows, this is done with a nice little app called Process Monitor (part of the brilliant SysInternals Suite you can download from Microsoft). But that is not the object of this post, here I will be discussing only the Linux solution: auditctl.

auditctl will let you monitor specific folders and see exactly what SuiteCRM is trying to read/write, and whether it’s succeding or not, and whether it’s failing due to permissions problems.

To install it on Ubuntu, use this (or something similar for your flavour of Linux):

sudo apt-get install auditd audispd-plugins

If you need to find your config file, to edit the log location, try this

find / -name auditd.conf 2>/dev/null

In my case, I edit it at this location:

nano /etc/audit/auditd.conf

Now you need to add rules saying what you want to monitor. Try to make them as restrictive as possible, there can be a lot of things going on in a file system… I suggest something like this (adapt to your paths, of course):

auditctl -a exit,always -F dir=/var/www/html/custom -F perm=rwa

auditctl -a exit,always -F dir=/var/www/html/modules -F perm=rwa

To list currently active rules use this command:

auditctl -l

Now you can cat or tail your log at the moment when you’re accessing the screens, or when you’re changing something in studio, or when you’re doing a Rebuild, to understand what’s going on. Here are a few examples of commands you can use to focus on a file, or on a folder:

cat /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep Line_Items.php

tail -f /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep -i 'custom/modules/AOS_Products_Quotes'

tail -f /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep -i 'Invoices\|Products\|Quotes'

That third example is an OR, so grep will match any of those three words (very useful!).

Note that there are performance issues associated with this technique. It should not be used on Production servers, or at least you should turn it off when you’re not needing it anymore.

To delete ALL rules, when you’re finished, so that performance isn’t hurt in the future:

auditctl -D

With this I believe you can see “under the hood” what SuiteCRM is trying to load, including directories it is searching, before deciding to load a file. You can also detect if the problem is caused by insufficient permissions. This is a great way to get a grip on what’s wrong with some file you’re trying to customize.

I even use it to learn how Studio works: I “watch” it doing the changes when I create a relationship, for example, and then check the files it touched to further customize or understand. It also lets me learn the various steps involved (Save, Deploy, Quick Repair and Rebuild).