Appboard/2.5/admin/log files

Overview

AppBoard provides a number of log files to record activity and to assist with monitoring and troubleshooting. By default these log files are set to be automatically compressed and rotated to prevent run-away disk usage.

Log files are stored in the following location: [INSTAL_HOME]/server/logs/


Log Files

The following table summarizes each log file and the information it provides:

Log File Description
appBoard.log All messages related to client-server communications
Information about data queries made to the server
Java runtime error messages
Other errors and warnings
error.log Subset of appBoard.log, containing only Error messages
ldap.log Messages related to LDAP
localhost_access_log.[date].txt Detail of all individual user HTTP requests made to the system. Note: AppBoard/enPortal does not log access to specific individual Widgets or Boards, but could enable debugging of all data queries so that those could be audited.
session.log Detail of all User sessions in the system, including:

- Timestamp
- Role
- Domain
- Username
- Transaction Result
- Session ID
- Total number of concurrent logins
- Total number of concurrent logins in the User's Domain
- IP address

system.log All errors, warnings, and informational messages related to the enPortal server. including:

- Expired license errors
- Items requested by the application that could not be located on the server
- User session information

tomcat.log The standard log file for the Tomcat web application container


Configuring Rotation

Log file rotation is configured in the config.properties (most log files) and appboard.properties (appBoard.log) property files under [INSTALL_HOME]/server/webapps/enportal/WEB-INF/config/.

The default configuration is as follows:

[ini,N]

  1. Log cleanup settings

logwatch.error.prefix=${logger.logs.path}/error.log logwatch.error.numberToKeep=7 logwatch.error.compress=true

logwatch.system.prefix=${logger.logs.path}/system.log logwatch.system.numberToKeep=7 logwatch.system.compress=true

logwatch.session.prefix=${logger.logs.path}/session.log logwatch.session.numberToKeep=7 logwatch.session.compress=true

logwatch.ldap.prefix=${logger.logs.path}/ldap.log logwatch.ldap.numberToKeep=7 logwatch.ldap.compress=true

logwatch.access.prefix=${logger.logs.path}/localhost_access_log logwatch.access.numberToKeep=7 logwatch.access.compress=true logwatch.access.skiplast=true

  1. Log cleanup settings

logwatch.appBoard.prefix=${logger.logs.path}/appBoard.log logwatch.appBoard.numberToKeep=7 logwatch.appBoard.compress=true

This background job can be used to clean up any files that always have the same prefix. It assumes either the files are names: (<logname>, <logname><suffix1>, <logname><suffix2>) or (<logname><suffix1>, <logname><suffix2>, and so on). In the first case, the one without the suffix is assumed to be the current log, while in the latter a flag “skiplast” is used to not archive/delete the last (in alpha-numeric ordering). This is only used for the tomcat access log.

numberToKeep does not include the current log, and compress will put the old log in a file named the same with ".zip" added. The process runs every 30 minutes to look for old files that need to be processed.

Log File Configuration

The standard log files above are written using the log4j library and can be configured through the enportal/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.xml file. For information on configuring log4j, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log4j#Configuration

Of note, the following settings will change the verbosity of the log files and how long each daily log is kept.

[xml,N] <param name="Threshold" value="INFO"/> <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="15"/>

Threshold can have values from most verbose to least of: TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR and FATAL.

The MaxBackupIndex is the number of daily logs to keep for each log file type, which is 15 by default.


enPortal CRS Log Configuration

The custom CRS log for the enPortal proxy is not handled by log4j. The log files are not rotated, but there are some controls you can implement to manage the size and content of the CRS log.

  • Example: Observe the following lines in [INSTALL_HOME]/server/webapps/enportal/WEB-INF/config/logger-crs.properties:
    • handlers.crsFile.class=com.edgetech.util.logger.FileHandler
    • handlers.crsFile.fileName=crs.log
  • You could add the following line to logger-crs-custom.properties to limit the size of this particular log file to about 1 MB:
    • handlers.crsFile.maxSize=1024000
  • Masking controls are also provided for controlling the verbosity of what is written to a number of the log files. The mask uses bits to turn on/off various information, and can be the sum of any of (0,1,2,4,8).


Submitting Log Files to Technical Support

For information on submitting a support ticket, see the Technical Support page.

For instructions on sending information to the Technical Support team, see the Submitting Files for Technical Support page.