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FAQs

Answers to questions about general features, troubleshooting, usage, and more.

General features

What sets RAGFlow apart from other RAG products?

The "garbage in garbage out" status quo remains unchanged despite the fact that LLMs have advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) significantly. In its response, RAGFlow introduces two unique features compared to other Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) products.

  • Fine-grained document parsing: Document parsing involves images and tables, with the flexibility for you to intervene as needed.
  • Traceable answers with reduced hallucinations: You can trust RAGFlow's responses as you can view the citations and references supporting them.

Which embedding models can be deployed locally?

Starting from v0.22.0, we ship only the slim edition and no longer append the -slim suffix to the image tag.

Where to find the version of RAGFlow? How to interpret it?

You can find the RAGFlow version number on the System page of the UI:

Image

If you build RAGFlow from source, the version number is also in the system log:

        ____   ___    ______ ______ __               
       / __ \ /   |  / ____// ____// /____  _      __
      / /_/ // /| | / / __ / /_   / // __ \| | /| / /
     / _, _// ___ |/ /_/ // __/  / // /_/ /| |/ |/ / 
    /_/ |_|/_/  |_|\____//_/    /_/ \____/ |__/|__/                             

2025-02-18 10:10:43,835 INFO     1445658 RAGFlow version: v0.15.0-50-g6daae7f2

Where:

  • v0.15.0: The officially published release.
  • 50: The number of git commits since the official release.
  • g6daae7f2: g is the prefix, and 6daae7f2 is the first seven characters of the current commit ID.

Why not use other open-source vector databases as the document engine?

Currently, only Elasticsearch and Infinity meet the hybrid search requirements of RAGFlow. Most open-source vector databases have limited support for full-text search, and sparse embedding is not an alternative to full-text search. Additionally, these vector databases lack critical features essential to RAGFlow, such as phrase search and advanced ranking capabilities.

These limitations led us to develop Infinity, the AI-native database, from the ground up.

Differences between demo.ragflow.io and a locally deployed open-source RAGFlow service?

demo.ragflow.io demonstrates the capabilities of RAGFlow Enterprise. Its DeepDoc models are pre-trained using proprietary data and it offers much more sophisticated team permission controls. Essentially, demo.ragflow.io serves as a preview of RAGFlow's forthcoming SaaS (Software as a Service) offering.

You can deploy an open-source RAGFlow service and call it from a Python client or through RESTful APIs. However, this is not supported on demo.ragflow.io.

Why does it take longer for RAGFlow to parse a document than LangChain?

We put painstaking effort into document pre-processing tasks like layout analysis, table structure recognition, and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) using our vision models. This contributes to the additional time required.

Why does RAGFlow require more resources than other projects?

RAGFlow has a number of built-in models for document structure parsing, which account for the additional computational resources.

Which architectures or devices does RAGFlow support?

We officially support x86 CPU and nvidia GPU. While we also test RAGFlow on ARM64 platforms, we do not maintain RAGFlow Docker images for ARM. If you are on an ARM platform, follow this guide to build a RAGFlow Docker image.

Do you offer an API for integration with third-party applications?

The corresponding APIs are now available. See the RAGFlow HTTP API Reference or the RAGFlow Python API Reference for more information.

Do you support stream output?

Yes, we do. Stream output is enabled by default in the chat assistant and agent. Note that you cannot disable stream output via RAGFlow's UI. To disable stream output in responses, use RAGFlow's Python or RESTful APIs:

Python:

RESTful:

Do you support sharing dialogue through URL?

No, this feature is not supported.

Do you support multiple rounds of dialogues, referencing previous dialogues as context for the current query?

Yes, we support enhancing user queries based on existing context of an ongoing conversation:

  1. On the Chat page, hover over the desired assistant and select Edit.
  2. In the Chat Configuration popup, click the Prompt engine tab.
  3. Switch on Multi-turn optimization to enable this feature.

Key differences between AI search and chat?

  • AI search: This is a single-turn AI conversation using a predefined retrieval strategy (a hybrid search of weighted keyword similarity and weighted vector similarity) and the system's default chat model. It does not involve advanced RAG strategies like knowledge graph, auto-keyword, or auto-question. Retrieved chunks will be listed below the chat model's response.
  • AI chat: This is a multi-turn AI conversation where you can define your retrieval strategy (a weighted reranking score can be used to replace the weighted vector similarity in a hybrid search) and choose your chat model. In an AI chat, you can configure advanced RAG strategies, such as knowledge graphs, auto-keyword, and auto-question, for your specific case. Retrieved chunks are not displayed along with the answer.

When debugging your chat assistant, you can use AI search as a reference to verify your model settings and retrieval strategy.

Troubleshooting

How to build the RAGFlow image from scratch?

See Build a RAGFlow Docker image.

Cannot access https://huggingface.co

A locally deployed RAGFlow downloads OCR models from Huggingface website by default. If your machine is unable to access this site, the following error occurs and PDF parsing fails:

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/root/.cache/huggingface/hub/models--InfiniFlow--deepdoc/snapshots/be0c1e50eef6047b412d1800aa89aba4d275f997/ocr.res'

To fix this issue, use https://hf-mirror.com instead:

  1. Stop all containers and remove all related resources:

    cd ragflow/docker/
    docker compose down

  2. Uncomment the following line in ragflow/docker/.env:

    # HF_ENDPOINT=https://hf-mirror.com

  3. Start up the server:

    docker compose up -d

MaxRetryError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='hf-mirror.com', port=443)

This error suggests that you do not have Internet access or are unable to connect to hf-mirror.com. Try the following:

  1. Manually download the resource files from huggingface.co/InfiniFlow/deepdoc to your local folder ~/deepdoc.

  2. Add a volumes to docker-compose.yml, for example:

    - ~/deepdoc:/ragflow/rag/res/deepdoc

WARNING: can't find /ragflow/rag/res/borker.tm

Ignore this warning and continue. All system warnings can be ignored.

network anomaly There is an abnormality in your network and you cannot connect to the server.

anomaly

You will not log in to RAGFlow unless the server is fully initialized. Run docker logs -f docker-ragflow-cpu-1.

The server is successfully initialized, if your system displays the following:

     ____   ___    ______ ______ __               
    / __ \ /   |  / ____// ____// /____  _      __
   / /_/ // /| | / / __ / /_   / // __ \| | /| / /
  / _, _// ___ |/ /_/ // __/  / // /_/ /| |/ |/ / 
 /_/ |_|/_/  |_|\____//_/    /_/ \____/ |__/|__/  

 * Running on all addresses (0.0.0.0)
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:9380
 * Running on http://x.x.x.x:9380
 INFO:werkzeug:Press CTRL+C to quit

Realtime synonym is disabled, since no redis connection

Ignore this warning and continue. All system warnings can be ignored.

Why does my document parsing stall at under one percent?

stall

Click the red cross beside the 'parsing status' bar, then restart the parsing process to see if the issue remains. If the issue persists and your RAGFlow is deployed locally, try the following:

  1. Check the log of your RAGFlow server to see if it is running properly:

    docker logs -f docker-ragflow-cpu-1

  2. Check if the task_executor.py process exists.

  3. Check if your RAGFlow server can access hf-mirror.com or huggingface.com.

Why does my pdf parsing stall near completion, while the log does not show any error?

Click the red cross beside the 'parsing status' bar, then restart the parsing process to see if the issue remains. If the issue persists and your RAGFlow is deployed locally, the parsing process is likely killed due to insufficient RAM. Try increasing your memory allocation by increasing the MEM_LIMIT value in docker/.env.

note

Ensure that you restart up your RAGFlow server for your changes to take effect!

docker compose stop
docker compose up -d

nearcompletion

Index failure

An index failure usually indicates an unavailable Elasticsearch service.

How to check the log of RAGFlow?

tail -f ragflow/docker/ragflow-logs/*.log

How to check the status of each component in RAGFlow?

  1. Check the status of the Elasticsearch Docker container:

    $ docker ps

    The following is an example result:

    5bc45806b680   infiniflow/ragflow:latest     "./entrypoint.sh"        11 hours ago   Up 11 hours               0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, :::80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp, :::443->443/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9380->9380/tcp, :::9380->9380/tcp   docker-ragflow-cpu-1
    91220e3285dd   docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:8.11.3   "/bin/tini -- /usr/l…"   11 hours ago   Up 11 hours (healthy)     9300/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9200->9200/tcp, :::9200->9200/tcp           ragflow-es-01
    d8c86f06c56b   mysql:5.7.18        "docker-entrypoint.s…"   7 days ago     Up 16 seconds (healthy)   0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp, :::3306->3306/tcp     ragflow-mysql
    cd29bcb254bc   quay.io/minio/minio:RELEASE.2023-12-20T01-00-02Z       "/usr/bin/docker-ent…"   2 weeks ago    Up 11 hours      0.0.0.0:9001->9001/tcp, :::9001->9001/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9000->9000/tcp, :::9000->9000/tcp     ragflow-minio

  2. Follow this document to check the health status of the Elasticsearch service.

IMPORTANT

The status of a Docker container status does not necessarily reflect the status of the service. You may find that your services are unhealthy even when the corresponding Docker containers are up running. Possible reasons for this include network failures, incorrect port numbers, or DNS issues.

Exception: Can't connect to ES cluster

  1. Check the status of the Elasticsearch Docker container:

    $ docker ps

    The status of a healthy Elasticsearch component should look as follows:

    91220e3285dd   docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:8.11.3   "/bin/tini -- /usr/l…"   11 hours ago   Up 11 hours (healthy)     9300/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9200->9200/tcp, :::9200->9200/tcp           ragflow-es-01

  2. Follow this document to check the health status of the Elasticsearch service.

    IMPORTANT

    The status of a Docker container status does not necessarily reflect the status of the service. You may find that your services are unhealthy even when the corresponding Docker containers are up running. Possible reasons for this include network failures, incorrect port numbers, or DNS issues.

  3. If your container keeps restarting, ensure vm.max_map_count >= 262144 as per this README. Updating the vm.max_map_count value in /etc/sysctl.conf is required, if you wish to keep your change permanent. Note that this configuration works only for Linux.

Can't start ES container and get Elasticsearch did not exit normally

This is because you forgot to update the vm.max_map_count value in /etc/sysctl.conf and your change to this value was reset after a system reboot.

{"data":null,"code":100,"message":"<NotFound '404: Not Found'>"}

Your IP address or port number may be incorrect. If you are using the default configurations, enter http://<IP_OF_YOUR_MACHINE> (NOT 9380, AND NO PORT NUMBER REQUIRED!) in your browser. This should work.

Ollama - Mistral instance running at 127.0.0.1:11434 but cannot add Ollama as model in RagFlow

A correct Ollama IP address and port is crucial to adding models to Ollama:

  • If you are on demo.ragflow.io, ensure that the server hosting Ollama has a publicly accessible IP address. Note that 127.0.0.1 is not a publicly accessible IP address.
  • If you deploy RAGFlow locally, ensure that Ollama and RAGFlow are in the same LAN and can communicate with each other.

See Deploy a local LLM for more information.

Do you offer examples of using DeepDoc to parse PDF or other files?

Yes, we do. See the Python files under the rag/app folder.

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

  1. Check the status of the MinIO Docker container:

    $ docker ps

    The status of a healthy Elasticsearch component should look as follows:

    cd29bcb254bc   quay.io/minio/minio:RELEASE.2023-12-20T01-00-02Z       "/usr/bin/docker-ent…"   2 weeks ago    Up 11 hours      0.0.0.0:9001->9001/tcp, :::9001->9001/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9000->9000/tcp, :::9000->9000/tcp     ragflow-minio

  2. Follow this document to check the health status of the Elasticsearch service.

IMPORTANT

The status of a Docker container status does not necessarily reflect the status of the service. You may find that your services are unhealthy even when the corresponding Docker containers are up running. Possible reasons for this include network failures, incorrect port numbers, or DNS issues.

Usage

How to run RAGFlow with a locally deployed LLM?

You can use Ollama or Xinference to deploy local LLM. See here for more information.

How to add an LLM that is not supported?

If your model is not currently supported but has APIs compatible with those of OpenAI, click OpenAI-API-Compatible on the Model providers page to configure your model:

openai-api-compatible

How to integrate RAGFlow with Ollama?

  • If RAGFlow is locally deployed, ensure that your RAGFlow and Ollama are in the same LAN.
  • If you are using our online demo, ensure that the IP address of your Ollama server is public and accessible.

See here for more information.

How to change the file size limit?

For a locally deployed RAGFlow: the total file size limit per upload is 1GB, with a batch upload limit of 32 files. There is no cap on the total number of files per account. To update this 1GB file size limit:

  • In docker/.env, uncomment # MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH=1073741824, adjust the value as needed, and note that 1073741824 represents 1GB in bytes.
  • If you update the value of MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH in docker/.env, ensure that you update client_max_body_size in nginx/nginx.conf accordingly.
NOTE

It is not recommended to manually change the 32-file batch upload limit. However, if you use RAGFlow's HTTP API or Python SDK to upload files, the 32-file batch upload limit is automatically removed.

Error: Range of input length should be [1, 30000]

This error occurs because there are too many chunks matching your search criteria. Try reducing the TopN and increasing Similarity threshold to fix this issue:

  1. Click Chat in the middle top of the page.
  2. Right-click the desired conversation > Edit > Prompt engine
  3. Reduce the TopN and/or raise Similarity threshold.
  4. Click OK to confirm your changes.

topn

How to get an API key for integration with third-party applications?

See Acquire a RAGFlow API key.

How to upgrade RAGFlow?

See Upgrade RAGFlow for more information.

How to switch the document engine to Infinity?

To switch your document engine from Elasticsearch to Infinity:

  1. Stop all running containers:

    $ docker compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml down -v
    WARNING

    -v will delete all Docker container volumes, and the existing data will be cleared.

  2. In docker/.env, set DOC_ENGINE=${DOC_ENGINE:-infinity}

  3. Restart your Docker image:

    $ docker compose -f docker-compose.yml up -d

Where are my uploaded files stored in RAGFlow's image?

All uploaded files are stored in Minio, RAGFlow's object storage solution. For instance, if you upload your file directly to a dataset, it is located at <knowledgebase_id>/filename.

How to tune batch size for document parsing and embedding?

You can control the batch size for document parsing and embedding by setting the environment variables DOC_BULK_SIZE and EMBEDDING_BATCH_SIZE. Increasing these values may improve throughput for large-scale data processing, but will also increase memory usage. Adjust them according to your hardware resources.

How to accelerate the question-answering speed of my chat assistant?

See here.

How to accelerate the question-answering speed of my Agent?

See here.

How to use MinerU to parse PDF documents?

From v0.22.0 onwards, RAGFlow includes MinerU (≥ 2.6.3) as an optional PDF parser of multiple backends. Please note that RAGFlow acts only as a remote client for MinerU, calling the MinerU API to parse PDFs and reading the returned files. To use this feature:

  1. Prepare a reachable MinerU API service (FastAPI server).
  2. In the .env file or from the Model providers page in the UI, configure RAGFlow as a remote client to MinerU:
    • MINERU_APISERVER: The MinerU API endpoint (e.g., http://mineru-host:8886).
    • MINERU_BACKEND: The MinerU backend:
      • "pipeline" (default)
      • "vlm-http-client"
      • "vlm-transformers"
      • "vlm-vllm-engine"
      • "vlm-mlx-engine"
      • "vlm-vllm-async-engine"
      • "vlm-lmdeploy-engine".
    • MINERU_SERVER_URL: (optional) The downstream vLLM HTTP server (e.g., http://vllm-host:30000). Applicable when MINERU_BACKEND is set to "vlm-http-client".
    • MINERU_OUTPUT_DIR: (optional) The local directory for holding the outputs of the MinerU API service (zip/JSON) before ingestion.
    • MINERU_DELETE_OUTPUT: Whether to delete temporary output when a temporary directory is used:
      • 1: Delete.
      • 0: Retain.
  3. In the web UI, navigate to your dataset's Configuration page and find the Ingestion pipeline section:
    • If you decide to use a chunking method from the Built-in dropdown, ensure it supports PDF parsing, then select MinerU from the PDF parser dropdown.
    • If you use a custom ingestion pipeline instead, select MinerU in the PDF parser section of the Parser component.
note

All MinerU environment variables are optional. When set, these values are used to auto-provision a MinerU OCR model for the tenant on first use. To avoid auto-provisioning, skip the environment variable settings and only configure MinerU from the Model providers page in the UI.

WARNING

Third-party visual models are marked Experimental, because we have not fully tested these models for the aforementioned data extraction tasks.

How to configure MinerU-specific settings?

The table below summarizes the most frequently used MinerU environment variables for remote MinerU:

Environment variableDescriptionDefaultExample
MINERU_APISERVERURL of the MinerU API serviceunsetMINERU_APISERVER=http://your-mineru-server:8886
MINERU_BACKENDMinerU parsing backendpipelineMINERU_BACKEND=pipeline|vlm-transformers|vlm-vllm-engine|vlm-mlx-engine|vlm-vllm-async-engine|vlm-http-client
MINERU_SERVER_URLURL of remote vLLM server (for vlm-http-client)unsetMINERU_SERVER_URL=http://your-vllm-server-ip:30000
MINERU_OUTPUT_DIRDirectory for MinerU output filesSystem-defined temporary directoryMINERU_OUTPUT_DIR=/home/ragflow/mineru/output
MINERU_DELETE_OUTPUTWhether to delete MinerU output directory when a temp dir is used1 (delete temp output)MINERU_DELETE_OUTPUT=0
  1. Set MINERU_APISERVER to point RAGFlow to your MinerU API server.
  2. Set MINERU_BACKEND to specify a parsing backend.
  3. If using the "vlm-http-client" backend, set MINERU_SERVER_URL to your vLLM server's URL. MinerU API expects backend=vlm-http-client and server_url=http://<server>:30000 in the request body.
  4. Set MINERU_OUTPUT_DIR to specify where RAGFlow stores MinerU API output; otherwise, a system temp directory is used.
  5. Set MINERU_DELETE_OUTPUT to 0 to keep MinerU's temp output (useful for debugging).
NOTE

For information about other environment variables natively supported by MinerU, see here.

How to use MinerU with a vLLM server for document parsing?

RAGFlow supports MinerU's vlm-http-client backend, enabling you to delegate document parsing tasks to a remote vLLM server while calling MinerU via HTTP. To configure:

  1. Ensure a MinerU API service is reachable (for example http://mineru-host:8886).
  2. Set up or point to a vLLM HTTP server (for example http://vllm-host:30000).
  3. Configure the following in your docker/.env file (or your shell if running from source):
    • MINERU_APISERVER=http://mineru-host:8886
    • MINERU_BACKEND="vlm-http-client"
    • MINERU_SERVER_URL="http://vllm-host:30000" MinerU API calls expect backend=vlm-http-client and server_url=http://<server>:30000 in the request body.
  4. Configure MINERU_OUTPUT_DIR / MINERU_DELETE_OUTPUT as desired to manage the returned zip/JSON before ingestion.
NOTE

When using the vlm-http-client backend, the RAGFlow server requires no GPU, only network connectivity. This enables cost-effective distributed deployment with multiple RAGFlow instances sharing one remote vLLM server.

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