Troubleshooting Self-Hosted Classic Edition (Docker)

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A temporary directory (instana-debug_{timestamp}) is created in the same directory as where you run the instana debug command with information about the system, the hardware, the state of all the installed components and their health, and component configuration settings, which give support engineers helpful information. Additionally, all information is written into instana-debug_{timestamp}.tar.gz file alongside.

Information about how to troubleshoot issues on Classic Edition.

You can run the instana debug command to dump the debug information of the system where the backend is running. In case something is wrong, this is a first step.

The debugging information includes information about the system, the hardware, the state of all the installed components, and their health. This data is collected locally, and nothing is transmitted over the wire.

Adjusting log level for Instana services

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You can adjust the log level to DEBUG for a specific service for 15 minutes.

  1. Get the Instana Docker container names by running the following command:

    docker ps --format '{{ .Names }}' | cut -d'-' -f 2-5

  2. Set the log level to DEBUG for a specific Instana service by running the following command:

    instana configure debug-log {service}

    Replace {service} with the Intana Docker container name related to the service that you want to debug.

    For example, run the following command to set the log level to DEBUG for the Instana container instana-acceptor.

    instana configure debug-log acceptor

Some metrics are not displayed on dashboards

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If some metrics are not displayed on dashboards, it's possible that the limit for metrics is reached. The metric limit is set to 3000, by default. To increase the limit for metrics, update the settings.hcl file as shown in the following example:

toggle "config.max.metrics" {
  value = "6000"
}

Then, run the instana update command, to apply the changes.

Instana backend becomes non‑functional when the Elasticsearch data disk exceeds 85% usage

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Elasticsearch automatically switches its data store to read‑only mode when the disk it uses exceeds 85% usage. This causes the Instana backend to stop functioning. Free up space on the Elasticsearch data disk or increase its capacity to restore normal operations. Note: Other Instana disks do not trigger read‑only behavior at similar usage levels (even above 95%), which can make this issue appear confusing.

To resolve this issue, do one of the following measures:
  • Free up space on the Elasticsearch data disk
  • Increase the disk size allocated to Elasticsearch
When sufficient space is available, Elasticsearch resumes normal write operations, and the backend becomes functional again.
Note: Other Instana disks do not enter read‑only mode at similar usage levels (even above 95%), which might lead to confusion during troubleshooting.