Tableau Server on Linux Help

By default, Tableau Services Manager (TSM) and Tableau Server log events at the Info level. You can change this if you need to gather more information (if you are working with Tableau Support, for example).

As a best practice you should not increase logging levels except when troubleshooting an issue, as instructed by Support. You should only set a logging level to debug when investigating a specific issue. Changing log levels can have these impacts:

• Increasing the log level to debug or trace increases the amount of information being logged and can have a significant impact to performance. Reproduce the issue and then reset the logging level back to info.
• Setting the log level to warn or error can reduce the amount of information so much that it is not useful for Tableau Support.

Note: When logging at the DEBUG level, full environment information is gathered when Tableau starts. This means that if you have any sensitive information in an environment variable, it may be included in a log. Logging at the default INFO level only gathers safe environment information.

Logging Levels

The following logging levels are listed in order of increasing amount of information logged:

• off
• fatal
• error
• warn
• info (the default)
• debug
• trace

Change Logging Levels

Set logging levels for TSM and Tableau Server processes using tsm configuration set configuration keys. The key you use depends on which component of TSM or Tableau Server you want to change the logging level for.

Dynamic log level configuration

In version 2020.2, we introduced dynamic configuration. The capability has been expanded in subsequent releases. If you are only changing logging levels for one or more of these components, and are running the appropriate version of Tableau, you can change the logging levels without restarting Tableau Server.

These logging levels are dynamically configurable, beginning with these versions:

• 2020.2 - tsm services (tsm.log.level) and control application services (tsm.controllerapp.log.level).
• 2020.3 - backgrounder (backgrounder.log.level), cluster controller (clustercontroller.log.level), data server (dataserver.log.level), file store (filestore.log.level), data source properties (tdsservice.log.level), and VizQL server (vizqlserver.log.level).
• 2020.4 - adds interactive microservice container (tomcatcontainer.log.level) and application server (vizportal.log.level).

Configuration Keys for Changing Logging Levels

This table includes both dynamically configurable keys and those that are not dynamically configurable.

For more information, see tsm configuration set Options.

If you are only changing dynamically configurable logging levels, you do not need to stop or start the server (for more information, see Dynamic log level configuration above). If you are changing other logging levels, you may need to stop Tableau Server before changing the logging levels and restart it afterwards. If this is the case, you will be prompted.

On a multi-node installation of Tableau Server, set logging levels from the initial node.

To change the logging level:

1. (Optional for dynamically configurable logging levels in 2020.2.0 and later) Stop Tableau Server by opening a command prompt and typing:

   tsm stop

2. Set the logging level to by typing tsm configuration set -k <config.key> -v <config_value>

   where <config.key> is one of the keys in the above table and <config_value> is a valid logging level.

   Examples:

   • tsm configuration set -k backgrounder.native_api.log.level -v debug                    

   • tsm configuration set -k tsm.log.level -v debug

   • tsm configuration set -k tsm.controlapp.log.level -v debug

3. Apply pending changes by running the tsm pending-changes apply command.

4. (Optional, only if server is stopped) Start Tableau Server by running the following command:

   tsm start

Reset Logging Levels

After you reproduce the issue and gather the information related to the issue, reset the logging levels so there is no lingering performance impact and no additional disk space used up.

Reset the logging level back to its default (info) using the appropriate command with a -d option. You need to apply pending changes after resetting the level, and if you are resetting logging levels for Tableau Server processes, you may need to stop the server before making the change and start it after applying the pending changes.

Examples:

• tsm configuration set -k backgrounder.native_api.log.level -d

• tsm configuration set -k tsm.log.level -d