+++
title = "Troubleshooting"
description = "Guide to troubleshooting Grafana problems"
keywords = ["grafana", "troubleshooting", "documentation", "guide"]
type = "docs"
[menu.docs]
parent = "admin"
weight = 8
+++


# Troubleshooting

This page lists some useful tools to help troubleshoot common Grafana issues.

## Visualization and query issues

{{< imgbox max-width="40%" img="/img/docs/v45/query_inspector.png" caption="Query Inspector" >}}

The most common problems are related to the query and response from your data source. Even if it looks
like a bug or visualization issue in Grafana, it is almost always a problem with the data source query or
the data source response.

To check this you should use query inspector, which was added in Grafana 4.5. The query inspector shows query requests and responses. Refer to the data source page for more information.

For more on the query inspector read the Grafana Community article [Using Grafana’s Query Inspector to troubleshoot issues](https://community.grafana.com/t/using-grafanas-query-inspector-to-troubleshoot-issues/2630). For older versions of Grafana, refer to the [How troubleshoot metric query issue](https://community.grafana.com/t/how-to-troubleshoot-metric-query-issues/50/2) article.

## Logging

If you encounter an error or problem, then you can check the Grafana server log. Usually located at `/var/log/grafana/grafana.log` on Unix systems or in `<grafana_install_dir>/data/log` on other platforms and manual installs.

You can enable more logging by changing log level in the Grafana configuration file.

## Diagnostics

The `grafana-server` process can be instructed to enable certain diagnostics when it starts. This can be helpful
when investigating certain performance problems. It's *not* recommended to have these enabled per default.

### Profiling

The `grafana-server` can be started with the arguments `-profile` to enable profiling and  `-profile-port` to override
the default HTTP port (`6060`) where the pprof debugging endpoints will be available, e.g.

```bash
./grafana-server -profile -profile-port=8080
```

Note that `pprof` debugging endpoints are served on a different port than the Grafana HTTP server.

You can configure or override profiling settings using environment variables:

```bash
export GF_DIAGNOSTICS_PROFILING_ENABLED=true
export GF_DIAGNOSTICS_PROFILING_PORT=8080
```

Refer to [Go command pprof](https://golang.org/cmd/pprof/) for more information about how to collect and analyze profiling data.

### Server side image rendering (RPM-based Linux)

Server side image (png) rendering is a feature that is optional but very useful when sharing visualizations, for example in alert notifications.

If the image is missing text make sure you have font packages installed.

```bash
sudo yum install fontconfig
sudo yum install freetype*
sudo yum install urw-fonts
```

### Tracing

The `grafana-server` can be started with the arguments `-tracing` to enable tracing and `-tracing-file` to override the default trace file (`trace.out`) where trace result is written to. For example:

```bash
./grafana-server -tracing -tracing-file=/tmp/trace.out
```

You can configure or override profiling settings using environment variables:

```bash
export GF_DIAGNOSTICS_TRACING_ENABLED=true
export GF_DIAGNOSTICS_TRACING_FILE=/tmp/trace.out
```

View the trace in a web browser (Go required to be installed):

```bash
go tool trace <trace file>
2019/11/24 22:20:42 Parsing trace...
2019/11/24 22:20:42 Splitting trace...
2019/11/24 22:20:42 Opening browser. Trace viewer is listening on http://127.0.0.1:39735
```

See [Go command trace](https://golang.org/cmd/trace/) for more information about how to analyze trace files.

## FAQs

Check out the [FAQ section](https://community.grafana.com/c/howto/faq) on the Grafana Community page for answers to frequently
asked questions.