[Tex/LaTex] How to make Biber also print the debug information in the log file

biberbiblatexdebuggingerrors

I've switched from BibTeX to Biber and I was struggling with some errors.

During those problems (see biblatex error: invalid format of field 'date' – what's wrong? and biber: Caught signal – SEGV – how to find the problematic bibtex entry? ) I noticed that other users seem to get a more detailed output in the log file (see e. g. https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/183645/biber-printbibliography-problem?rq=1).

I also tried to run biber --tool --debug myreferences.bib, but I'm still missing those details (like the problematic source text for a FATAL error)

example of my current project

command: biber -tool –debug references.bib

INFO - This is Biber 1.9 running in TOOL mode
INFO - Config file is '/Users/mbg4/.biber.conf'
INFO - Logfile is 'references.bib.blg'
INFO - DEBUG mode: all messages are logged to 'references.bib.blg'
INFO - Looking for bibtex format file 'references.bib'
INFO - Decoding LaTeX character macros into UTF-8
INFO - Found BibTeX data source 'references.bib'
WARN - Datamodel: Entry '2005' (references.bib): Invalid format '2005/12//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry '2002a' (references.bib): Invalid format '2002/12//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'Ferri2009' (references.bib): Invalid format '2009/3/25/' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'Klein2005' (references.bib): Invalid format '2005/9//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Range field 'pages' in entry 'Prochazaka1983' is malformed, skipping
WARN - Datamodel: Entry '2006b' (references.bib): Invalid format '2006/2//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'Lu2001a' (references.bib): Invalid format '2001/6/15/' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'Schubert2002' (references.bib): Invalid format '2002/9//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'N.N.c' (references.bib): Invalid format 'Apr\,2003' of date field 'urldate' - ignoring
FATAL - Caught signal: SEGV
Likely your .bib has a very bad entry which causes libbtparse to crash: 

how I'd like it to look like (the FATAL – Caught signal: SEGV line):

[496] bibtex.pm:1029> DEBUG - Parsing namestring 'Coyle, ,Thomas W.' [496] bibtex.pm:94> FATAL - Caught signal: SEGV

Used software

  • TeXLive 2014 on MacOS X
  • biblatex v2.9a
  • biber 1.9

Best Answer

The screen output one gets from running Biber is almost always the same; the difference in whether one uses no option, --debug or even --trace is found in the .blg file.

For a --tool run on a stand-alone .bib file, you will find the information in <file name>.blg, so

biber --tool --debug lorem.bib

gives a lorem.bib.blg with all the log output you want.

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