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Re: Logging problem

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Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> wrote in
news:7aw6r.13692$wd1.4427@newsfe13.iad: 

> 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. 
> 

Thanks for the clarification Arved. It all makes perfectly good sense the 
way you explain it - just as I expected it would ;-)


-- 
Novice

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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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