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Re: Logging problem

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On 12-03-09 05:32 PM, Novice wrote:
> Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> wrote in
> news:Mit6r.5211$v11.1861@newsfe20.iad: 
> 
>> On 12-03-09 01:36 AM, Novice wrote:
>> [ SNIP ]
>>>
>>> It would be very helpful if someone could explain what would happen
>>> in a real-world production situation where a long-running batch
>>> program or a constantly-running online program started writing error
>>> messages to the log. What will operators do to be able to read the
>>> log? I'm guessing they force it to close early and then start a new
>>> file or they have a tool that will read the log file correctly even
>>> without the final </log> tag. 
>>>
>> In a real-world production situation odds are you're getting errors
>> logged all the time. There are a whole bunch of errors that will
>> happen, sometimes frequently, sometimes a few times a day, sometimes
>> once a month, but you know they _will_ happen. So routine errors get
>> logged all the time.
>>
> I'm a little surprised by that. I would have thought actual errors would 
> get acted on fairly quickly, particulary anything categorized as SEVERE. 
> (I'll use the java.util.logging levels for these remarks.) I could see 
> that something that is categorized as WARNING may take longer to fix, 
> especially if WARNING is used for messages that indicate the program is 
> able to continue using some kind of alternate strategy; if the alternate 
> strategy is perfectly reasonable and doesn't skew the result, there's no 
> great harm in leaving the problem unsolved. But if we assume that a 
> SEVERE error is a show-stopper, wouldn't that get dealt with right away?
[ SNIP ]

When I use the term "error" here, I mean conditions that correspond to
severity levels 3 (Error) and 4 (Warning) of Syslog (RFC 5424,
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5424, also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syslog#Severity_levels). These levels
translate to ERROR and WARN of log4j. java.util.logging has WARNING that
maps to syslog 4, but doesn't have enough granularity with SEVERE to
capture the necessary distinction between syslog 0-2 (Emergency, Alert,
Critical) and 3 (Error); log4j does that reasonably well with ERROR and
FATAL.

Syslog describes Error (level 3) means a non-urgent failure. Admins or
developers have some time frame (other than "yesterday") to resolve the
problem. This is the kind of error that happens a lot, overall, and
99.99% of them have to do with network printing.

Just kidding (about the printing). But you get the idea, a syslog Error
is an operational error. Your app identified a problem through good
error-handling and basically decided it couldn't proceed, but the app
itself is not at risk. Maybe a file provided by an external system is
malformed, and input processing for a scheduled import job aborts.
That's a syslog 3 Error - depending on the nature of the import and when
it happened you might have hours or days to fix the problem.

Your impressions of what the levels mean aren't exactly wrong. If we
take j.u.l SEVERE as syslog 0-2 and j.u.l WARNING as syslog 4 then they
map OK, and your descriptions are pretty good. But java.util.logging is
missing that important syslog 3 mapping, and in order to make j.u.l
levels useable you need to add it. IMHO. But that's one of the reasons I
prefer log4j. I don't even know what the Sun developers were thinking
when they left that one out...maybe they don't use logs.

AHS
-- 
Last week I helped my friend stay put. It's a lot easier'n helpin' 'em
move. I just went over to his house and made sure that he did not start
to load shit into a truck.
-- Mitch Hedberg

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Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-08 19:38 +0000
  Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-08 14:48 -0500
    Re: Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-08 20:06 +0000
      Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-08 15:38 -0500
        Re: Logging problem Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2012-03-08 22:02 +0000
      Re: Logging problem Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-03-08 14:53 -0800
        Re: Logging problem markspace <-@.> - 2012-03-08 15:20 -0800
          Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-08 19:48 -0500
            Re: Logging problem Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-03-08 17:17 -0800
              Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-08 20:55 -0500
                Re: Logging problem markspace <-@.> - 2012-03-08 18:01 -0800
                Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-08 21:19 -0500
      Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-08 20:56 -0500
  Re: Logging problem markspace <-@.> - 2012-03-08 14:18 -0800
    Re: Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-09 01:53 +0000
      Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-08 20:59 -0500
      Re: Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-09 05:36 +0000
        Re: Logging problem Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-03-09 06:27 -0800
        Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-09 12:31 -0500
          Re: Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-09 18:57 +0000
            Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-09 14:26 -0500
        Re: Logging problem Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2012-03-09 15:59 -0400
          Re: Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-09 21:32 +0000
            Re: Logging problem Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-03-09 13:56 -0800
              Re: Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-09 22:57 +0000
                Re: Logging problem Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2012-03-10 14:51 +0000
                Re: Logging problem Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2012-03-10 13:00 -0400
                Re: Logging problem Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2012-03-10 10:04 -0800
                Re: Logging problem Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2012-03-10 20:23 +0000
                Re: Logging problem Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2012-03-10 07:56 -0800
                Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-10 12:05 -0500
                Re: Logging problem Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2012-03-10 10:10 -0800
                Re: Logging problem Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-03-12 16:13 -0400
                Re: Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-10 20:10 +0000
            Re: Logging problem Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2012-03-09 19:15 -0400
              Re: Logging problem Novice <novice@example..com> - 2012-03-10 01:59 +0000

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