# TensorBoard

TensorBoard is a suite of web applications for inspecting and understanding your
TensorFlow runs and graphs. TensorBoard currently supports four visualizations:
scalars, images, histograms, and the graph.

You can play with an interactive demo TensorBoard at
[tensorflow.org/tensorboard/cifar.html](https://www.tensorflow.org/tensorboard/cifar.html).

This README gives an overview of key concepts in TensorBoard, as well as how to
interpret the visualizations TensorBoard provides. For an in-depth example of
using TensorBoard, see the tutorial: [TensorBoard: Visualizing
Learning](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/master/how_tos/summaries_and_tensorboard/index.html).
For in-depth information on the Graph Visualizer, see this tutorial: [TensorBoard: Graph Visualization](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/master/how_tos/graph_viz/index.html).

# Usage

Before running TensorBoard, make sure you have generated summary data in a log
directory by creating a `SummaryWriter`:

``` python
# sess.graph_def is the graph definition; that enables the Graph Visualizer.

summary_writer = tf.train.SummaryWriter('/path/to/logs', sess.graph_def)
```

For more details, see [this
tutorial](http://www.tensorflow.org/how_tos/summaries_and_tensorboard/index.html#serializing-the-data).
Once you have event files, run TensorBoard and provide the log directory. If
you're using a precompiled TensorFlow package (e.g. you installed via pip), run:

```
tensorboard --logdir=path/to/logs
```

Or, if you are building from source:

```
bazel build tensorflow/tensorboard:tensorboard
./bazel-bin/tensorflow/tensorboard/tensorboard --logdir=path/to/logs
```

This should print that TensorBoard has started. Next, connect to http://localhost:6006.

Note that TensorBoard requires a `logdir` to read logs from. For info on
configuring TensorBoard, run `tensorboard --help`.

# Key Concepts

### Summary Ops: How TensorBoard gets data from TensorFlow

The first step in using TensorBoard is acquiring data from your TensorFlow run.
For this, you need [summary
ops](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.8/api_docs/python/train.html#summary-operations).
Summary ops are ops, like
[`tf.matmul`](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.8/api_docs/python/math_ops.html#matmul)
or
[`tf.nn.relu`](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.8/api_docs/python/nn.html#relu),
which means they take in tensors, produce tensors, and are evaluated from within
a TensorFlow graph. However, summary ops have a twist: the Tensors they produce
contain serialized protobufs, which are written to disk and sent to TensorBoard.
To visualize the summary data in TensorBoard, you should evaluate the summary
op, retrieve the result, and then write that result to disk using a
SummaryWriter. A full explanation, with examples, is in [the
tutorial](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.8/how_tos/summaries_and_tensorboard/index.html).

### Tags: Giving names to data

When you make a summary op, you will also give it a `tag`. The tag is basically
a name for the data recorded by that op, and will be used to organize the data
in the frontend. The scalar and histogram dashboards organize data by tag, and
group the tags into folders according to a directory/like/hierarchy. If you have
a lot of tags, we recommend grouping them with slashes.

### Event Files & LogDirs: How TensorBoard loads the data

`SummaryWriters` take summary data from TensorFlow, and then write them to a
specified directory, known as the `logdir`. Specifically, the data is written to
an append-only record dump that will have "tfevents" in the filename.
TensorBoard reads data from a full directory, and organizes it into the history
of a single TensorFlow execution.

Why does it read the whole directory, rather than an individual file? You might
have been using
[supervisor.py](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/python/training/supervisor.py)
to run your model, in which case if TensorFlow crashes, the supervisor will
restart it from a checkpoint. When it restarts, it will start writing to a new
events file, and TensorBoard will stitch the various event files together to
produce a consistent history of what happened.

### Runs: Comparing different executions of your model

You may want to visually compare multiple executions of your model; for example,
suppose you've changed the hyperparameters and want to see if its converging
faster. TensorBoard enables this through different "runs". When TensorBoard is
passed a `logdir` at startup, it recursively walks the directory tree rooted at
`logdir` looking for subdirectories that contain tfevents data. Every time it
encounters such a subdirectory, it loads it as a new `run`, and the frontend
will organize the data accordingly.

For example, here is a well-organized TensorBoard log directory, with two runs,
"run1" and "run2".

```
/some/path/mnist_experiments/ some/path/mnist_experiments/run1/
/some/path/mnist_experiments/run1/events.out.tfevents.1456525581.name
/some/path/mnist_experiments/run1/events.out.tfevents.1456525585.name
/some/path/mnist_experiments/run2/
/some/path/mnist_experiments/run2/events.out.tfevents.1456525385.name
/tensorboard --logdir=/some/path/mnist_experiments
```

# The Visualizations

### Scalar Dashboard

TensorBoard's Scalar Dashboard visualizes scalar statistics that vary over time;
for example, you might want to track the model's loss or learning rate. As
described in *Key Concepts*, you can compare multiple runs, and the data is
organized by tag. The line charts have the following interactions:

* Clicking on the small blue icon in the lower-left corner of each chart will
expand the chart

* Dragging a rectangular region on the chart will zoom in

* Double clicking on the chart will zoom out

* Mousing over the chart will produce crosshairs, with data values recorded in
the run-selector on the left.

Additionally, you can create new folders to organize tags by writing regular
expressions in the box in the top-left of the dashboard.

### Histogram Dashboard

The Histogram Dashboard is for visualizing how the statistical distribution of a
Tensor has varied over time. It visualizes data recorded via a
tf.histogram_summary. Right now, its name is a bit of a misnomer, as it doesn't
show histograms; instead, it shows some high-level statistics on a distribution.
Each line on the chart represents a percentile in the distribution over the
data: for example, the bottom line shows how the minimum value has changed over
time, and the line in the middle shows how the median has changed. Reading from
top to bottom, the lines have the following meaning: `[maximum, 93%, 84%, 69%,
50%, 31%, 16%, 7%, minimum]`

These percentiles can also be viewed as standard deviation boundaries on a
normal distribution: `[maximum, μ+1.5σ, μ+σ, μ+0.5σ, μ, μ-0.5σ, μ-σ, μ-1.5σ,
minimum]` so that the colored regions, read from inside to outside, have widths
`[σ, 2σ, 3σ]` respectively.

This histogram visualization is a bit weird, and cannot meaningfully represent
multimodal distributions. We are currently working on a true-histogram
replacement.

### Image Dashboard

The Image Dashboard can display pngs that were saved via a tf.image_summary. The
dashboard is set up so that each row corresponds to a different tag, and each
column corresponds to a run. Since the image dashboard supports arbitrary pngs,
you can use this to embed custom visualizations (e.g. matplotlib scatterplots)
into TensorBoard. This dashboard always shows you the latest image for each tag.

### Graph Explorer

The Graph Explorer can visualize a TensorBoard graph, enabling inspection of the
TensorFlow model. To get best use of the graph visualizer, you should use name
scopes to hierarchically group the ops in your graph - otherwise, the graph may
be difficult to decipher. For more information, including examples, see [the
graph visualizer
tutorial](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.8/how_tos/graph_viz/index.html#tensorboard-graph-visualization).

# Frequently Asked Questions

### Does TensorBoard support distributed summary writers?

No. Currently, TensorBoard expects that only a single summary writer will be
active at a time, and as consequence, only a single events file is ever written
to at a time. Violating this assumption may cause TensorBoard to lose data or
stop updating unexpectedly. If you are running a distributed training process,
we encourage you to designate a single worker as the "chief" that is responsible
for writing all summaries to disk.

### My TensorBoard isn't showing any data! What's wrong?

The first thing to do is ensure that TensorBoard is properly loading data from
the correct directory. Launch `tensorboard --logdir=DIRECTORY_PATH --debug` and
look for output of the form

`INFO:tensorflow:TensorBoard path_to_run is: {'DIRECTORY_PATH': None}`

Verify that the DIRECTORY_PATH TensorBoard is looking at is the path you expect.
(Note: There's a known issue where TensorBoard [does not handle paths starting
in ~ properly](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/1587)).

If you're loading from the proper path, make sure that event files are present.
TensorBoard will recursively walk its logdir, it's fine if the data is nested
under a subdirectory. Try running the command:

`find DIRECTORY_PATH | grep tfevents`

If you have at least one result, then TensorBoard should be able to load data.

Finally, let's make sure that the event files actually have data. Inspecting
them is a bit tricky, but we can get a hint from the size: try

`find DIRECTORY_PATH | grep tfevents | xargs ls -lh`  

and look at the sizes of the files. If they are all tiny (around 69 bytes) then
they probably just contain a file version descriptor, but no actual events.

If after running this procedure, it's still not working, please file an [issue
on GitHub](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues). It will be much
easier for us to debug it if you provide an event file that isn't working.

### TensorBoard is showing only some of my data, or isn't properly updating!

This issue usually comes about because of how TensorBoard iterates through the
`tfevents` files: it progresses through the events file in timestamp order, and
only reads one file at a time. Let's suppose we have files with timestamps `a`
and `b`, where `a<b`. Once TensorBoard has read all the events in `a`, it will
never return to it, because it assumes any new events are being written in the
more recent file. This could cause an issue if, for example, you have two
`SummaryWriters` simultaneously writing to the same directory. If you have
multiple summary writers, each one should be writing to a separate directory.

### Does TensorBoard support multiple or distributed summary writers?

No. TensorBoard expects that only one events file will be written to at a time,
and multiple summary writers means multiple events files. If you are running a
distributed TensorFlow instance, we encourage you to designate a single worker
as the "chief" that is responsible for all summary processing. See
[supervisor.py](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/python/training/supervisor.py)
for an example.

### I'm seeing data overlapped on itself! What gives?

If you are seeing data that seems to travel backwards through time and overlap
with itself, there are a few possible explanations.

* You may have multiple execution of TensorFlow that all wrote to the same log
directory. Please have each TensorFlow run write to its own logdir.

* You may have a have a bug in your code where the global_step variable (passed
to `SummaryWriter.add_summary`) is being maintained incorrectly.

* It may be that your TensorFlow job crashed, and was restarted from an earlier
checkpoint. See *How to handle TensorFlow restarts*, below.

As a workaround, try changing the x-axis display in TensorBoard from `steps` to
`wall_time`. This will frequently clear up the issue.

### How should I handle TensorFlow restarts?

TensorFlow is designed with a mechanism for graceful recovery if a job crashes
or is killed: TensorFlow can periodically write model checkpoint files, which
enable you to restart TensorFlow without losing all your training progress.

However, this can complicate things for TensorBoard; imagine that TensorFlow
wrote a checkpoint at step `a`, and then continued running until step `b`, and
then crashed and restarted at timestamp `a`. All of the events written between
`a` and `b` were "orphaned" by the restart event and should be removed.

To facilitate this, we have a `SessionLog` message in
`tensorflow/core/util/event.proto` which can record `SessionStatus.START` as an
event; like all events, it may have a `step` associated with it. If TensorBoard
detects a `SessionStatus.START` event with step `a`, it will assume that every
event with a step greater than `a` was orphaned, and it will discard those
events. This behavior may be disabled with the flag
`--purge_orphaned_data=false` (in versions after 0.7).

### How can I export data from TensorBoard?

If you'd like to export data to visualize elsewhere (e.g. iPython Notebook),
that's possible too. You can directly depend on the underlying classes that
TensorBoard uses for loading data: `python/summary/event_accumulator.py` (for
loading data from a single run) or `python/summary/event_multiplexer.py` (for
loading data from multiple runs, and keeping it organized). These classes load
groups of event files, discard data that was "orphaned" by TensorFlow crashes,
and organize the data by tag.

As another option, there is a script
(`tensorboard/scripts/serialize_tensorboard.py`) which will load a logdir just
like TensorBoard does, but write all of the data out to disk as json instead of
starting a server. This script is setup to make "fake TensorBoard backends" for
testing, so it is a bit rough around the edges.

### Can I overlap multiple plots?

Right now, you can overlap plots only if they are from different runs, and both
have the same tag name.

### Can I create scatterplots (or other custom plots)?

This isn't yet possible. As a workaround, you could create your custom plot in
your own code (e.g. matplotlib) and then write it into an `SummaryProto`
(`core/framework/summary.proto`) and add it to your `SummaryWriter`. Then, your
custom plot will appear in the TensorBoard image tab.

### Is my data being downsampled? Am I really seeing all the data?

TensorBoard uses [reservoir
sampling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir_sampling) to downsample your
data so that it can be loaded into RAM. You can modify the number of elements it
will keep per tag in
[tensorboard/backend/server.py](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/tensorboard/backend/server.py).

### I get a network security popup every time I run TensorBoard on a mac!

This is because by default, TensorBoard serves on host `0.0.0.0` which is
publicly accessible. You can stop the popups by specifying `--host=localhost` at
startup.

### How can I develop TensorBoard?

See [tensorflow/tensorboard/DEVELOPMENT.md](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/tensorboard/DEVELOPMENT.md).

### I have a different issue that wasn't addressed here!

First, try searching our [GitHub
issues](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues) and [Stack
Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tensorboard). It may be
that someone else has already had the same issue or question.

If you have a bug, please [file a GitHub
issue](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues). If the bug is related
to your specific data (e.g. the events aren't loading properly), please upload
some events files that will reproduce the issue - that makes it much easier for
us to debug and fix.

If you have a feature request, please [file a GitHub
issue](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues).

General usage questions should go to [Stack
Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tensorflow).
