Table of Contents

Troubleshooting SWIRL
Community Edition | Enterprise Edition

Understanding .swirl

The swirl.py control script tracks running services and their process IDs (PIDs) in a file called .swirl.

Example .swirl File

For a fully running system, the file looks like this:

{"django": 26391, "celery-worker": 26424}

How .swirl Works

  • The .swirl file is read by the status and stop commands to check running processes.
  • These commands use ps -p with stored PIDs to determine if services are actually running.

If you manually start or stop services, the .swirl file updates accordingly.

Fixing Out-of-Sync .swirl Files

If the .swirl file does not match actual running processes:

  1. Delete the file (rm .swirl).
  2. Restart SWIRL to regenerate it.
  3. Manually stop any remaining SWIRL processes before restarting.

Finding SWIRL Processes

To check for running SWIRL processes, use the following commands:

On macOS or Linux: 

ps -ef | grep daphne
ps -ef | grep celery
ps -ef | grep redis

Logs

All SWIRL services write logs to the logs/ folder inside swirl-search.

Log Files Overview

Logfile Description Notes
logs/django.log Logs Django container activity, including all API calls. Not involved in query federation.
logs/celery-worker.log Logs Celery tasks, including search federation processes. Look for errors in search.status or partial results.
logs/celery-beats.log Logs Celery Beats service, used for Search Expiration and Subscription Services. Check here if subscriptions or expirations are not working.

Viewing Logs

To continuously view logs, run:

python swirl.py logs/

This command displays live log output from all SWIRL services.

Example Log Entry (INFO Level) 

2023-08-02 10:49:09,466 INFO     admin search 452 FULL_RESULTS_READY 32 2.2

For detailed logging, enable Debug mode:

  • Restart SWIRL with the --debug flag.
  • Alternatively, update the settings.py file (see the Developer Guide for details).