Troubleshooting

This page is designed to help you deal with common issues you may encounter while running your on-premises version of Overleaf.

If you are using an earlier version please use sharelatex instead of overleaf in path names.

Running Overleaf with an NFS filesystem

Mounting a NFS filesystem in an Overleaf container is technically possible, but it's not recommended and can result in different types of performance errors.

One common error that compiles see is:

EBUSY: resource busy or locked, unlink '/var/lib/overleaf/data/compiles/62f3d57bef7cf9005c364e75-62f3d57bef7cf9005c364e7a/.nfs573663533034825247625441'

In particular we advise against using NFS backed filesystems for ephemeral data, like the directories use for compilation data. We recommend using a local scratch disk, preferably a local SSD for the following directories:

For docker-compose based setups, we suggest just overriding the bind-mount from NFS, which avoids changing paths in the application. Here's an example of a docker-compose config excerpt with the use of a scratch disk that is mounted at /scratch:

services:
  sharelatex:
    environment:
      SANDBOXED_COMPILES_HOST_DIR: /scratch/compiles/
    volumes:
      - nfs:/var/lib/overleaf/data
      - /scratch/cache/:/var/lib/overleaf/data/cache
      - /scratch/compiles/:/var/lib/overleaf/data/compiles
      - /scratch/output/:/var/lib/overleaf/data/output
      - /scratch/tmp/:/var/lib/overleaf/tmp

There is no need to migrate any existing files from the NFS to their new home after the update. The LaTeX compiler can recreate all the files with a full compilation run again.

Running Overleaf on Windows or macOS results in the mongoservice not starting

If you're running Overleaf on Windows or macOS, the mongo service may fail to restart, with an error:

Failed to start up WiredTiger under any compatibility version.
Reason: 1: Operation not permitted

To avoid this error, the data needs to be stored in a volume rather than a bind mounted directory (see the mongo image documentation for more details). To store data inside Docker volumes mounted inside the MongoDB and Redis containers, add the following to config/docker-compose.override.yml (create this file if it doesn't exist yet):

volumes:
  mongo-data:
  redis-data:

services:
  mongo:
    volumes:
      - mongo-data:/data/db

  redis:
    volumes:
      - redis-data:/data

Upgrading to Redis 6.2 results in a restart loop

Use the docker logs redis command to output a copy of the logs.

Fatal: Can't initialize Background Jobs

The full output will look something like this:

1:M 11 Feb 2024 15:19:22.609 # Server initialized
1:M 11 Feb 2024 15:19:22.609 # Fatal: Can't initialize Background Jobs.
1:C 11 Feb 2024 15:19:26.055 # oO0OoO0OoO0Oo Redis is starting oO0OoO0OoO0Oo

If you see the line Fatal: Can't initialize Background Jobs, this may be related to the version of Docker currently in use. Updating to a version >=20.10.10 should resolve this issue.

For more information, see the Redis upstream issue here: https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/12362

Incorrect orientation of template gallery preview/thumbnail images

On occasion, the preview/thumbnail images generated by Server Pro can be created in the wrong orientation and require manual intervention to correct. These images are stored in /var/lib/overleaf/data/template_files/ (>= 5.0.3) and /var/lib/sharelatex/data/template_files/ (earlier).

We recommend backing up this folder before making any changes.

You'll need to follow the steps below for each affected template:

• Navigate to your instances template gallery (/templates/all), open an affected template, and copy the ID from the URL (https://your-instance-url/templates/6645d346c224815e9460a695)

• Run the following command from the Docker host:

docker exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "mogrify -rotate 90 /var/lib/overleaf/data/template_files/6645d346c224815e9460a695_*{thumbnail,preview}"

In the above example, you'll need to replace the ID 6645d346c224815e9460a695 with the one from the affected template and update the path if appropriate.

Please verify that you have enabled system calls. For pdflatex, this is 'pdflatex -shell-escape'.

The \write18 command is disabled by default in the Community Edition due to all compiles happening within the same sharelatex container, and all things considered, it is the safer default option for this particular type of installation.

Should you wish, you can enable this for pdflatex by creating a latexmkrc file in the root of your project with the content $pdflatex = 'pdflatex --shell-escape'; and then try recompiling.