6 Replies Latest reply on Apr 27, 2009 11:50 PM by jaikiran

default append setting to log/server.log is false

dimitris Jan 20, 2009 12:08 PM

Looking at https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS-6361.

Our default setting for log/server.log is to re-create the file upon start-up.

 <!-- A time/date based rolling appender -->
 <appender name="FILE" class="org.jboss.logging.appender.DailyRollingFileAppender">
 <errorHandler class="org.jboss.logging.util.OnlyOnceErrorHandler"/>
 <param name="File" value="${jboss.server.log.dir}/server.log"/>
 <param name="Append" value="false"/>

I suppose this is a convenient setting for a developer environment, where you only need to keep the log for the latest run (although using a RollingFileAppender really contradicts the developer point, a plain FileAppender would be preferrable), but for a production environment you'll most probably want to keep the existing log content during a re-start.

What do you think - should we switch to append == true?

1. Re: default append setting to log/server.log is false

dimitris Mar 4, 2009 4:52 AM (in response to dimitris)

Ok, I've set append mode to 'true' by default, which is a more logical production setting. Either this, or a developer needs to switch to a standard FileAppender that always recreates the log from scratch and doesn't keep any memory.
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2. Re: default append setting to log/server.log is false

jaikiran Mar 26, 2009 10:59 AM (in response to dimitris)

Now that this param is set to true, do you think it would be better to by default use a size based rolling file appender (for server.log) instead of the time based daily rolling appender.

I keep restarting my dev system multiple times a day and just noticed that the size of the server.log had grown up to 300 MB :)
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3. Re: default append setting to log/server.log is false

jaikiran Mar 26, 2009 12:57 PM (in response to dimitris)

Hmm, i think the answer to my question lies in your previous post.

"jaikiran" wrote:

I keep restarting my dev system multiple times a day and just noticed that the size of the server.log had grown up to 300 MB :)

"dimitris@jboss.org" wrote:
I've set append mode to 'true' by default, which is a more logical production setting

So on dev systems, i will configure this to my liking (i.e. append=false) :)
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4. Re: default append setting to log/server.log is false

dimitris Apr 24, 2009 8:41 AM (in response to dimitris)

For development a standard FileAppender (non-rollgin) with append=false suits better, yes.
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5. Re: default append setting to log/server.log is false

trustin Apr 27, 2009 8:20 AM (in response to dimitris)

What about writing a RollingFileAppender that rolls when a log file grows up to a certain size (e.g. 4MB) and keep only several old logs (e.g. 10 x 4 = 40MB at max)? Should be pretty useful for development - shorter editor startup time and no worries for disk space.
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6. Re: default append setting to log/server.log is false

jaikiran Apr 27, 2009 11:50 PM (in response to dimitris)
"trustin" wrote:
What about writing a RollingFileAppender that rolls when a log file grows up to a certain size (e.g. 4MB) and keep only several old logs (e.g. 10 x 4 = 40MB at max)? Should be pretty useful for development - shorter editor startup time and no worries for disk space.

It's already there in log4j :) It's commented out in the jboss-log4j.xml:


I think it might make sense to have this size based rolling file appender (with Append=true) as default *even in production* instead of the time based appender. This way we don't have to worry about the log file growing to a large size even in production environment (imagine the user application doing a lot of logging or some other reason) during a day.
All we have to do is switch the "FILE" appender in jboss-log4j.xml to RollingFileAppender and set the maxfilesize and maxbackupindex to a reasonable value and also set append =true.

Thoughts?
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