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Observability (OpenSearch + Logstash + Dashboards)

Canasta includes an optional observability stack that collects logs from MediaWiki, Caddy, and MySQL and makes them searchable through OpenSearch Dashboards.

Contents

Enabling observability

The observability stack runs as an optional Docker Compose profile. To enable it, set COMPOSE_PROFILES to include observable in your .env file.

New installations

Create an .env file with the profile enabled, then pass it to canasta create:

echo "COMPOSE_PROFILES=observable" > my.env
canasta create -i myinstance -w mywiki -a admin -e my.env

Or append observable to an existing .env file that already sets COMPOSE_PROFILES:

COMPOSE_PROFILES=web,observable

Existing installations

Add COMPOSE_PROFILES=observable (or append ,observable) to the .env file in your installation directory, then upgrade:

canasta upgrade -i myinstance

In both cases, the CLI automatically: - Generates OS_USER, OS_PASSWORD, and OS_PASSWORD_HASH in .env - Adds the OpenSearch Dashboards reverse proxy block to the Caddyfile

Accessing OpenSearch Dashboards

  • URL: https://<your-domain>/opensearch
  • Login: Use the OS_USER and OS_PASSWORD values from your installation's .env file.

Viewing logs

  1. Open OpenSearch Dashboards at /opensearch.
  2. Go to Discover.
  3. Select an index pattern from the top-left dropdown.
  4. Adjust the time range (top-right) to include recent activity.

By default, two log sources are available immediately:

Index pattern Source
caddy-logs-* Caddy reverse proxy access logs
mysql-logs-* MySQL error logs

The mediawiki-logs-* index pattern only appears if MediaWiki logging is enabled (see below).

Enabling MediaWiki logging

By default, MediaWiki does not write log files. To enable logging, add the following to config/settings/global/Logging.php (or a per-wiki settings file):

<?php
$wgDebugLogFile = "/var/log/mediawiki/debug.log";
$wgDBerrorLog = "/var/log/mediawiki/dberror.log";
$wgDebugLogGroups = [
    'exception' => "/var/log/mediawiki/exception.log",
    'error' => "/var/log/mediawiki/error.log",
];

Then restart:

canasta restart -i myinstance

Once log files are created, the mediawiki-logs-* index pattern will appear automatically in Dashboards.

Index patterns

Index patterns are created automatically by an init container when the observability profile starts. It waits for OpenSearch Dashboards to be ready and for at least one log index to exist, then creates patterns for each available index. A second pass runs 60 seconds later to pick up any late-arriving indices.

If automatic creation fails (check docker logs <id>-observable-init-1), you can create patterns manually:

  1. Open OpenSearch Dashboards > Stack Management > Index Patterns.
  2. Create patterns for the indices that exist:
  3. caddy-logs-*
  4. mysql-logs-*
  5. mediawiki-logs-* (only if MediaWiki logging is enabled)
  6. Select @timestamp as the time field.

Verifying logs are flowing

If you do not see logs in Dashboards:

  • Generate some activity (browse the wiki, log in, edit a page).
  • Ensure the observability containers are running: canasta list or docker ps.
  • Check container logs for errors: 
    docker logs <id>-logstash-1
docker logs <id>-opensearch-1

Security notes

  • OpenSearch has its security plugin disabled (plugins.security.disabled=true). Access to OpenSearch Dashboards is protected by Caddy's basicauth. OpenSearch itself is only accessible within the Docker network (no ports exposed to the host).
  • OpenSearch Dashboards port 5601 is not exposed to the host; access is exclusively through the Caddy reverse proxy at /opensearch.