Troubleshooting

Is something not working as expected? Don’t worry if you can’t figure out what the problem is; we’re here to help! First, ensure your app is compatible with the agent’s supported technologies.

If you’re an existing Elastic customer with a support contract, please create a ticket in the Elastic Support portal. Other users can post in the APM discuss forum.

Agent logs are critical to the debugging process. By default, this logging is disabled. To enable it, set a log output file with ELASTIC_APM_LOG_FILE. Alternatively, if you’re using Docker or Kubernetes and are okay with mixing agent and application logs, you can set ELASTIC_APM_LOG_FILE=stderr.

With logging enabled, use ELASTIC_APM_LOG_LEVEL to increase the granularity of the agent’s logging. For example: ELASTIC_APM_LOG_FILE=debug.

Be sure to execute a few requests to your application before posting your log files. Each request should add lines similar to these in the logs:

{"level":"debug","time":"2020-07-23T11:46:32+08:00","message":"sent request with 100 transactions, 0 spans, 0 errors, 0 metricsets"}

If you don’t see lines like these, it’s likely that you haven’t instrumented your application correctly.

In the unlikely event the agent causes disruptions to a production application, you can disable the agent while you troubleshoot.

If you have access to dynamic configuration, you can disable the recording of events by setting ELASTIC_APM_RECORDING to false. When changed at runtime from a supported source, there’s no need to restart your application.

If that doesn’t work, or you don’t have access to dynamic configuration, you can disable the agent by setting ELASTIC_APM_ACTIVE to false. Restart your application for the changes to apply.