Document hidden troubleshooting tools
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Description
RethinkDB has some hidden interfaces that are useful for testing, troubleshooting, or debugging. We should mention these in the documentation, but make it clear that they are not officially supported and may change without warning.
- The
rethinkdb._debug_statssystem table displays some internal stats. It's similar torethinkdb.stats, but much more detailed and also much less user-friendly. This information can help the RethinkDB engineers troubleshoot some performance problems. - The
rethinkdb._debug_table_statussystem table displays detailed status information for each table, similar torethinkdb.table_status. This information can help the RethinkDB engineers troubleshoot issues with tables getting "stuck" and not becoming available. - The
rethinkdb._debug_scratchsystem table acts like a regular table except that it's not written to disk or replicated over the network. Some of the RethinkDB integration tests use it. - If
read_modeis set to"_debug_direct", RethinkDB will read directly from whatever data is stored locally on the server that received the query, bypassing the normal cluster query routing infrastructure. If the table is sharded, the resulting data may be incomplete. Some of the RethinkDB integration tests use this to confirm that the data is stored on the right servers. Because this interface bypasses the normal cluster query routing infrastructure, it can also be used as a last resort to access data if there is a bug in the query routing infrastructure that preventsread_mode="outdated"from working.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by locating the documentation pages covering system tables and query read modes, then review the four hidden interfaces listed in the issue. Done means each interface is documented with its troubleshooting or testing purpose and a clear warning that it is unsupported and may change without notice.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- documentation
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Difficulty
- 2/5
- Estimated time
- 1-3 hours
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100