Enportal/5.6/admin/system administration/Log Files

Overview

enPortal provides various log files to assist you 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: [INSTALL_HOME]/server/logs

Log Files

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

Log File	Description
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 HTTP requests serviced by the system including proxied requests.
session.log	Detail of all User sessions in the system, including: Timestamp Role Domain Username Transaction Result Session ID Duration of Session 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 Application-level access log. This logs per-user accesses to enPortal Channels.
tomcat.log	The standard log file for the Tomcat web application container

Configuring Rotation

Log file rotation is configured in the config.properties file under [INSTALL_HOME]/server/webapps/enportal/WEB-INF/config/, including settings such as the following:

[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. This log should only be enabled when specific CRS debugging is being performed. 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).

Enabling crsRequest.log

To enable output to crsRequest.log, modify logger-crs.properties to show the following:

[ini,N]

1. loggers.request.mask=0,2,4,8

loggers.request.mask=0xFFFFFFFF loggers.request.assignedHandlers.requestFile.formatter=requestFormatter

2. File handler that logs all executive log records to the specified file.

handlers.requestFile.class=com.edgetech.util.logger.FileHandler handlers.requestFile.fileName=crsRequest.log handlers.requestFile.maxSize=1024

CRS Debugging with crsoutput.csv

enPortal does not have any built-in tool to examine the raw HTTP request/response between the enPortal and proxied backend applications. Normally, it is ideal to have the backend application run in HTTP mode. That way, you can use wireshark to view the traffic between the portal and the backend application. Sometimes that is not possible, such as when running in HTTPS mode. In this case, you can use Fiddler to do two captures and make the comparison between them. First, you capture the traffic directly with the backend application. Secondly, you capture the traffic accessing the application when it is proxied in enPortal. Usually, by doing call by call comparison and comparing the Request and Response of each call is enough to figure the issues why it is not working in enPortal. You may have to examine some of HTTP headers and debug CRS rules.

Perform the following steps to temporarily enable the CRS global log file:

Create following three parameters in custom.properties:

[ini,N] crs.log.global.active=true crs.log.file.active=true crs.log.file.name=${catalina.home}/logs/crsoutput.csv

Re-start enPortal and access a proxied channel, then examine the crsoutput.csv file in the ${INSTALL_HOME}/server/logs directory.

The CRS debugging files can increase in size very rapidly, so should only be enabled briefly and then disabled when troubleshooting is completed.

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.