Search dashboard shows an update failed status for a data source

When the search dashboard shows an update failed status for a data source this means something occurred during the data source update that caused it to fail.

data source update failed status

High level debug process

Click on the view log files link the is displayed beneath the update failed status message to open the log viewer.

Determine what part of the update failed

The first step that should be completed when investigating a failed update is to determine which part of the update (e.g. gathering, indexing) caused the failure.

Check the main update log, named update_DATA-SOURCE-ID.log (where DATA-SOURCE-ID is replaced with the ID of the data source you are debugging)from the collection log files section of the log viewer.

Look through this log file to determine which part of the update generated the error.

The most common failures are indicated by the following:

  • Indicates that the update failed during gathering:

    Error details:
    Failure in: Phase: Gathering content. step name: 'GatherPhase'
  • Indicates that the update failed during indexing, and the step was Index. The step is important here because it will tell you which log you should look at to investigate further:

    Error details:
    Failure in: Phase: Indexing content. step name: 'Index'
  • Indicates that the update failed during the document count check.

    Error details:
    Failure in: Checking the total number of documents indexed is sufficient. step name: 'ChangeOverIndexCountCheck'
    Caused by:
    Views will not be swapped because the changeover condition check failed. This data set has only 6.45% (5597/86775) as many docs as the last one. See the changeover_percent setting for details.

Examine the detailed log files for the affected part of the update

Once you know which part of the update failed you can view more detailed log files, which are grouped under the offline log files heading.

Offline log files include all the log files for the data source’s offline view, which corresponds to either an incomplete/in-progress or failed update, or the previous successful update if the data source is not currently updating.

The log files to investigate will depend on where the issue with the update occurred.

If the failure occurred during gathering

  • Start by checking the gatherer log file. The name of this log file will vary depending on the type of gatherer e.g. crawler.log for a web data source, gatherer.log for various other data sources. See: Funnelback log file reference for information on Funnelback’s log files.

  • If you are investigating a web data source it’s also worth checking the url_errors.log, gather.log and for more details, the crawl.X.log(.gz) files.

If the failure occurred during indexing

  • Check the update.log to determine exactly which step caused the update, then view the corresponding Step-X.log for details on the problem.

If the failure during the document count check

This indicates that the new index is significantly smaller than the previously live index.

Other failures

Errors in other parts of the update will be captured in other offline log files. See the Funnelback log file reference for information on Funnelback’s log files.