Home → Admin Manual → Troubleshooting Guides → Turn On Debugging and Logging In HelpSpot 5

12.1. Turn On Debugging and Logging In HelpSpot 5

There are two debugging / logging settings in HelpSpot 5 that can be enabled. Both of these settings are found in the .env settings file in the root of your HelpSpot install directory.

HelpSpot Cloud customers, please contact customer support for debugging assistance.

The first setting that can be enabled is:

• APP_DEBUG=true

This setting will enabled the display of errors and stack traces in the browser when they are encountered. It is set to false by default. This should not be enabled long term and should be turned back off when debugging is complete.

The second setting is not included in the .env file by default. To enable it you will need to add this string:

• LOG_LEVEL=debug

This setting will cause more details on certain processes in HelpSpot to be written to the helpspot.log file located in helpspot/storage/logs/helpspot.log. 

• On Windows systems, note that when changing these settings you will need to restart the Windows HelpSpot services in order for them to take effect for logging items like mail retrieval and sending queue jobs.
• For Linux systems, you can issue the command sudo supervisorctl restart all (or sudo supervisorctl restart helpspot:* if you run other processes via supervisor).

Also note that setting LOG_LEVEL=debug produces more verbose log output, so be sure to monitor the helpspot.log file size. Remove the LOG_LEVEL=debug directive from the .env file once you've completed troubleshooting to prevent file bloat.

The log file will surface issues with filesystem folder permissions, email connectivity details, configuration errors, or even specific trouble with individual email messages.