diff --git a/TROUBLESHOOTING.md b/TROUBLESHOOTING.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..e2fd643ef41 --- /dev/null +++ b/TROUBLESHOOTING.md @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +# Troubleshooting gRPC + +This guide is for troubleshooting gRPC implementations based on C core library (sources for most of them are living in the `grpc/grpc` repository). + +## Enabling extra logging and traces + +Extra logging can be very useful for diagnosing problems. All gRPC implementations based on C core library support +the `GRPC_VERBOSITY` and `GRPC_TRACE` environment variables that can be used to increase the amount of information +that gets printed to stderr. + +## GRPC_VERBOSITY + +`GRPC_VERBOSITY` is used to set the minimum level of log messages printed by gRPC (supported values are `DEBUG`, `INFO` and `ERROR`). + +## GRPC_TRACE + +`GRPC_TRACE` can be used to enable extra logging for some internal gRPC components. Enabling the right traces can be invaluable +for diagnosing for what is going wrong when things aren't working as intended. Possible values for GRPC_TRACE are listed in [Environment Variables Overview](doc/environment_variables.md). +Multiple traces can be enable at once (use comma as separator). + +``` +# Enable debug logs for an application +GRPC_VERBOSITY=debug ./helloworld_application_using_grpc +``` + +``` +# Print info about invocations of low-level C core API. +# Note that trace logs of log level DEBUG won't be displayed +# as GRPC_VERBOSITY and GRPC_TRACE are 2 independent settings. +GRPC_TRACE=api ./helloworld_application_using_grpc +``` + +``` +# Print info from 3 different tracers, including tracing logs with log level DEBUG +GRPC_VERBOSITY=debug GRPC_TRACE=tcp,http,api ./helloworld_application_using_grpc +``` + +Known limitations: `GPRC_TRACE=tcp` is currently not implemented for Windows (you won't see any tcp traces). + +Please note that the GRPC_TRACE environment variable has nothing to do with gRPC's "tracing" feature (= tracing RPCs in +microservice environment to gain insight about how requests are processed by deployment), it is merely used to enable printing +of extra logs.