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Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:20:04 +0100
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 <CAL+Y1ntLrVFsQipuDXEuxR=8=tpeP-HNxkUTO_bXhgsrc-2Xhw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: view_indexer fails / cryptic error messages
From: Dave Cottlehuber <dch@jsonified.com>
To: user@couchdb.apache.org
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On 22 March 2013 06:16, Gerald Richter - ECOS <richter@ecos.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> I am using couchdb for over two years now and I really love it, but I hat=
e it=92s error messages. If there is one thing I would wish that should be =
in the next release, than it would be: human readable error messages. I kno=
w that writing good error messages is nothing that programmer likes to do. =
We like more to implement great new features, but for the daily work having=
 a good diagnostic message is of so much value and saves so much time=85

Good call, maybe you want to open a JIRA for this and we can discuss
what needs to change?

> So in addition to the many hour I spend in the past, trying to decrypt an=
 error message of couchdb, here is one that really gives me no clue what it=
 is about and I am giving up. Neither starting couchdb with debug output, n=
or looking at the output of my viewserver, shows anything irregular. Basica=
lly a view index is rebuild and it crashes somewhere in the middle of the p=
rocess with the error message below.  I hope somebody on the list, could sh=
ed some light what=92s going on here.

If you can run the view build with log level =3D debug  and send a link
to the results we might see something more interesting.

Don't forget what version of erlang, and couch you are running.

I'm pretty sure one of these fields in that log excerpt will tell you
the last doc processed but I don't see it right now myself.

If your view is small, you might consider sprinkling in some log
messages http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/HTTP_view_API#Debugging_Views
bearing in mind there's a *significant* performance impact for doing
this.

If your view is failing at the same place each time, you'll see this
when you delete the view, re-run the build, query _info (see below)
and then re-run the build and re-query _info again.

http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/HTTP_view_API?action=3Dshow&redirect=3DHttpV=
iewApi#Getting_Information_about_Design_Documents_.28and_their_Views.29

If that *is* the case you can run a few of those docs manually through
the view engine, e.g. for JS like this
http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Troubleshooting#Map.2BAC8-Reduce_debugging

A+
Dave