Debugs can be run safely in almost all environments as soon as you don’t enable a “debug all” command on the equipment.

Enabling debug on Aruba OS is pretty straightforward. Example below is to see messages regarding 802.1X and Mac-based authentication on switch port :

security port-access authenticator include port 7
security port-access mac-based include port 7
security port-access supplicant include port 7

As you can see, you can add a filter, it will be easier to understand output after. You can decide to print output to several destinations:

CSP_NB_2# debug destination
  logging               Send debug messages to syslog server.
  session               Print debug messages to terminal.
  buffer                Print debug messages to a buffer in memory.

I usually use session destination to begin and test the right debug command, then I switch to buffer or syslog, so I can disconnect and reconnect later to see logs. Note that the buffer is cleared after reload, so use syslog if you want to debug something related to hardware issue.

To print buffer :

CSP_NB_2# sho debug buff
  0256:23:19:06.54 1X   m8021xCtrl:Port 7: connection terminated.
 0256:23:19:06.54 MAC  mWebAuth:Port: 7 now off-line.
 0256:23:19:10.40 MAC  mWebAuth:Port: 7 now being monitored for mac-based authentication.