Service Troubleshooting

This section provides guidance on diagnosing and resolving common issues encountered with our services. Effective troubleshooting involves understanding the symptoms, identifying the root cause, and applying the appropriate solution.

Common Issues and Solutions

1. Service Unavailable / Timeout Errors

Symptoms: Requests to the service fail with a 503 Service Unavailable error, or requests take an excessively long time to complete (timeout).

Check Service Status: Verify the current status of the service via our status page.
Network Connectivity: Ensure there are no network issues between your client and the service endpoints. Check firewall rules and DNS resolution.
Resource Utilization: If you manage the service deployment, monitor server resources (CPU, memory, disk I/O). High utilization can lead to performance degradation and timeouts.
Load Balancers: If using a load balancer, check its health checks and configuration. Ensure it's directing traffic to healthy service instances.
Recent Deployments: If the issue started after a recent deployment, consider rolling back to a previous stable version.

Tip: Often, a simple restart of the service instance can resolve transient issues.

2. Authentication and Authorization Errors

Symptoms: Requests are rejected with 401 Unauthorized or 403 Forbidden errors.

API Keys/Credentials: Double-check that your API keys, tokens, or other authentication credentials are correct, valid, and have not expired.
Permissions: Ensure the authenticated principal has the necessary permissions to perform the requested action. Consult the API Reference for specific permission requirements.
Request Headers: Verify that authentication information is being sent in the correct HTTP headers (e.g., Authorization: Bearer <token>).
Clock Skew: For time-sensitive authentication mechanisms (like JWTs), ensure that the clocks on your client and the server are reasonably synchronized.

Warning: Never hardcode sensitive credentials directly into client-side code. Use secure methods for storing and retrieving them.

3. Data Processing Errors

Symptoms: Unexpected or incorrect results from service operations, or errors related to data format.

Input Validation: Validate that the data sent to the service adheres to the expected format, data types, and constraints. Refer to the API Reference for input specifications.
Encoding: Ensure that character encodings (e.g., UTF-8) are consistent between the client and the server.
Data Corruption: Check if the source data might be corrupted or incomplete.
Service Logs: Examine service logs for specific error messages related to data processing.

4. Rate Limiting

Symptoms: Requests are intermittently failing with 429 Too Many Requests errors.

Understand Limits: Familiarize yourself with the service's rate limits, which are typically documented in the API Reference.
Implement Backoff: When you receive a 429 error, implement an exponential backoff strategy for retrying requests.
Distribute Requests: If possible, distribute your requests over time or across multiple API keys/clients.
Optimize Usage: Review your application's logic to minimize unnecessary API calls.

Gathering Information for Support

If you are unable to resolve an issue yourself, please contact our support team. To help us diagnose the problem quickly, please provide the following information:

A detailed description of the problem, including the steps to reproduce it.
The exact error message and code received.
The timestamp of when the issue occurred (including timezone).
The specific API endpoint or operation you were using.
Relevant request and response headers (excluding sensitive information).
Any relevant logs from your application or environment.
The client version or SDK you are using, if applicable.

Important: For security reasons, do not include sensitive data such as passwords or unencrypted tokens in your support requests.

Advanced Troubleshooting Techniques

For more in-depth analysis, consider the following:

Network Tracing: Use tools like Wireshark or tcpdump to capture and analyze network traffic.
Request/Response Logging: Implement comprehensive logging in your client application to capture all requests and responses.
Performance Profiling: Profile your application to identify performance bottlenecks that might be impacting service interactions.