How to generate sosreport in different directory instead of default directory

Sosreport is a tool that collects configuration details, system information, diagnostic information and system logs from Linux server. Sosreport  generates  an archive report from the running system. The archive may be stored locally or centrally for recording or tracking purposes.

Normally sosreport will be saved under /tmp (RHEL6) /var/tmp (RHEL7) directory on linux server. Some time we need to save the sosreport to some other temporary directory because of space issue. 

Below steps are used to generate sosreport in different directory.

RHEL 5.6 and earlier

We need to set the temporary path environment before running sosreport.

[root@nsk ~]# env TMP=/path/to/target/directory sosreport

RHEL 5.7 and above

We have to use option --tmp-dir with sosreport to redirect the sosreport path 

[root@nsk ~]# sosreport --tmp-dir /path/to/target/directory

Sosreport may have hung because of a specific plugin. We can list all available sosreport plugin modules by below command

[root@nsk ~]# sosreport -l

Identify which plugin is hanging on by below command

[root@nsk ~]# sosreport -vvvv 

If a plugin times out or last plugin does not finish, rerun the sosreport and skip that plugin

[root@nsk ~]# sosreport -v -n plugin_name --tmp-dir /path/to/target/directory