Troubleshooting Process

1. Verify that the data warehouse server is running
2. Try connecting to the data warehouse using another client from a machine you know should have access
3. Try connecting to the data warehouse from another client from the machine you're running Metabase on
4. Add the connection in Metabase
5. Examine the logs to verify that the sync process started and that no errors were thrown
6. Run a native "SELECT 1" query to verify the connection to the data warehouse
7. If the sync process has completed, attempt to do a "Raw data" query to verify that you are able to use the database

Specific Problems:

The Data Warehouse Server is not running

How to detect this:

As silly as this sounds, occasionally database servers go down.

If you are using a hosted database service, go to its console and verify that its status is Green. If you have direct access to a command line interface, log in and make sure that it is up and running and accepting queries.

How to fix this:

It's out of the scope of this troubleshooting guide to get your data warehouse server back up. Check with whomever set it up for you!

The Data Warehouse Server is not accepting connections from your IP

How to detect this:

If you are able to access the server from a bastion host, or another machine, use nc on Linux (or your operating system's equivalent) to verify that you can connect to the host on a given port.

The port a data warehouse's server software is attached to varies, but an example for a default PostgreSQL configuration (which listens on port 5432) would be:

nc -v your-db-host 5432

How to fix this:

It's out of the scope of this troubleshooting guide to change your network configuration. Talk to whomever is responsible for the network your data warehouse is running on.

Incorrect credentials

How to detect this:

If you've verified that you can connect to the host and port on the data warehouse, the next step is to check your credentials.

Again, connecting to a data warehouse depends on your database server software, but for PostgreSQL, the below uses a command line interface (psql) to connect to your data warehouse.

psql -h HOSTNAME -p PORT -d DATABASENAME -U DATABASEUSER

If your credentials are incorrect, you should see an error message letting you know if the database name or the user/password are incorrect.

How to fix this:

If the database name or the user/password combination are incorrect, ask the person running your data warehouse for correct credentials.

Connection time out ("Your question took too long")

How to detect this:

If you see the error message, "Your question took too long," something in your setup timed out. Depending on the specifics of your deployment, this could be a timeout in:

• Your load balancer
• Your reverse proxy server (e.g. Nginx)
• Jetty
• Your database
• Elastic Beanstalk or EC2
• Heroku
• App Engine

How to fix this:

Fixing this depends on your specific setup. Here are some potentially helpful resources:

• How to Fix 504 Gateway Timeout using Nginx
• Configuring Jetty connectors
• EC2 Troubleshooting
• Elastic Load Balancing Connection Timeout Management
• Heroku timeouts
• App Engine: Dealing with DeadlineExceededErrors