Configuring log settings
You set up local and remote logging under Administration > System Settings: Logging.
By default, the system rotates each log file every 24 hours or if the file size reaches one GB uncompressed. You can change this to rotate every week or month and you can rotate the files based on file size.
The automatic rotation of system logs deletes your oldest log file, labeled as Archived log #10, pushes the current log to Archived log # 1, and starts a new current-day log file.
To rotate the logs manually, under Log Actions, click Rotate Logs. After the logs are rotated, this message appears:
logs successfully rotated
When you click Rotate Logs, your archived file #1 contains data for a partial day because you are writing a new log before the current 24-hour period is complete.
Under Logging Configuration, these configuration options are available:
Minimum Severity
Specifies the minimum severity level for the system log messages. The log contains all messages with this severity level or higher. Select one of these levels from the drop-down list:
• Emergency—Emergency, the system is unusable.
• Alert—Action must be taken immediately.
• Critical—Conditions that affect the functionality of the SteelHead.
• Error—Conditions that probably affect the functionality of the SteelHead.
• Warning—Conditions that could affect the functionality of the SteelHead, such as authentication failures.
• Notice—Normal but significant conditions, such as a configuration change. This is the default setting.
• Info—Informational messages that provide general information about system operations.
This control applies to the system log only. It doesn’t apply to the user log.
Maximum Number of Log Files
Specifies the maximum number of logs to store. The default value is 10.
Lines Per Log Page
Specifies the number of lines per log page. The default value is 100.
Rotate Based On
Specifies the rotation option:
• Time specifies Day, Week, or Month from the drop-down list. The default setting is Day.
• Disk Space specifies how much disk space, in megabytes, the log uses before it rotates. The default value is 16 MB.
The log file size is checked at 10-minute intervals. If there’s an unusually large amount of logging activity, it’s possible for a log file to grow larger than the set disk space limit in that period of time.
Adding or removing a log server
To add or remove a log server, these configuration options are available:
Add a New Log Server
Displays the controls for configuring new log servers.
Server IP
Specifies the server IP address.
Minimum Severity
Specifies the minimum severity level for the log messages. The log contains all messages with this severity level or higher. Select one of these levels from the drop-down list:
• Emergency—Emergency, the system is unusable.
• Alert—Action must be taken immediately.
• Critical—Conditions that affect the functionality of the SteelHead.
• Error—Conditions that probably affect the functionality of the SteelHead.
• Warning—Conditions that could affect the functionality of the SteelHead, such as authentication failures.
• Notice—Normal but significant conditions, such as a configuration change. This is the default setting.
• Info—Informational messages that provide general information about system operations.
Filtering logs by application or process
You can filter a log by one or more applications or one or more processes. This is particularly useful when capturing data at a lower severity level where an appliance might not be able to sustain the flow of logging data the service is committing to disk.
Under Per-Process Logging, these configuration options are available:
Add a New Process Logging Filter
Displays the controls for adding a process level logging filter.
Process
Specifies a process to include in the log from the drop-down list:
• alarmd—Alarm control and management.
• cifs—CIFS Optimization.
• cmcfc—CMC automatic registration utility.
• rgp—SCC connector, which handles SCC appliance communication.
• rgpd—SCC client daemon, the connection manager.
• cli—Command-line interface.
• mgmtd—Device control and management, which directs the entire device management system. It handles message passing between various management daemons, managing system configuration and general application of system configuration on the hardware underneath through the hald.
• http—HTTP optimization.
• notes—Lotus Notes optimization.
• mapi—MAPI optimization.
• pm—Process Manager, which handles launching of internal system daemons and keeps them up and running.
• sched—Process Scheduler, which handles one-time scheduled events.
• statsd—Statistics Collector, which handles queries and storage of system statistics.
• wdt—Watchdog Timer, the motherboard watchdog daemon.
• webasd—Web Application Process, which handles the web user interface.
• domain auth—Windows Domain Authentication.
Minimum Severity
Specifies the minimum severity level for the log messages. The log contains all messages with this severity level or higher. Select one of these levels from the drop-down list:
• Emergency—Emergency, the system is unusable.
• Alert—Action must be taken immediately.
• Critical—Conditions that affect the functionality of the appliance.
• Error—Conditions that probably affect the functionality of the appliance.
• Warning— Conditions that could affect the functionality of the appliance, such authentication failures.
• Notice—Normal but significant conditions, such as a configuration change. This is the default setting.
• Info—Informational messages that provide general information about system operations.