Hi all,

Does anyone know of an application that is capable of loading a log file
that has been written to using the RollingFileAppender?  I know there's
the Log4Net Viewer and Chainsaw, but I think these applications just
listen to UDP packets, and I need to examine historical logs in files.

I need a viewer that can display log entries in date order and grouped
by thread ideally.  Does anyone know of an application that can do this?

Thanks
Ian

Ian Dykes
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Esendex Ltd

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[v1.1 EN]

Log4j's Chainsaw can parse files written using a RollingFileAppender - on the Chainsaw side, use a LogFilePatternReceiver (the Welcome tab in Chainsaw has a 'view example receiver configuration' toolbar button which contains an example xml configuration).  The JavaDoc for LogFilePatternReceiver describes how you specify the log format.

If you need help, post your conversion pattern and I'll let you know what log format to use on the Chainsaw receiver side.


Scott Deboy
COMOTIV SYSTEMS
111 SW Columbia Street Ste. 950
Portland, OR  97201

Telephone:      503.224.7496
Cell:           503.997.1367
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sdeboy@comotivsystems.com

www.comotivsystems.com

Hi Scott,

I didn't know Chainsaw could parse log files, so thanks for that.  I'm
giving it a go now, but the conversion pattern is a little complex:

<layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">   
     <param name="Header" value="---Start of session---&#xD;&#xA;" />

     <param name="Footer" value="---End of session---&#xD;&#xA;" />    
     <param name="ConversionPattern"
value="[slf5s.start]%d{DATE}[slf5s.DATE]%n%p[slf5s.PRIORITY]%n%x[slf5s.N
DC]%n%t[slf5s.THREAD]%n%c[slf5s.CATEGORY]%n%l[slf5s.LOCATION]%n%m[slf5s.
MESSAGE]%n%n" />
    </layout>

Here's an example of an entry in the log file using this pattern:

[slf5s.start⑪ Oct 2007 10:39:38,387[slf5s.DATE]
DEBUG[slf5s.PRIORITY]
(null)[slf5s.NDC]
14[slf5s.THREAD]
com.esendex.net.smpp.pdu.PDU[slf5s.CATEGORY]
com.esendex.net.smpp.pdu.PDU.Serialize(:0)[slf5s.LOCATION]
>> PDU Body   38643300 [SubmitSMResponsePDU][slf5s.MESSAGE]

I'm looking at the Javadocs here:
http://logging.apache.org/log4j/companions/receivers/apidocs/org/apache/
log4j/varia/LogFilePatternReceiver.html, and I can't see how to specify
that the log entry is on multiple lines, so I get a lot of entries in
the Chainsaw trace say "found non-matching line".

I've tried ignoring characters, but I'm not clear on how exactly to do
this.  I know I need to specify a delimiter character but as you can see
the message itself has square brackets in, and these will form part of
the delimiter in some places.

Could you let me know what format I should use for the Chainsaw
receiver?

Thanks
Ian



Ian Dykes
Software Developer
Esendex Ltd

T: +44 (0)115 852 5762
F: +44 (0)115 852 5757
Email: ian.dykes@esendex.com
Web: www.esendex.com
Blog: http://devproj20.blogspot.com/

Esendex: Connect and Communicate

LogFilePatternReceiver can preserve all lines of a -message- field which
contains newlines, but doesn't support newline as a delimiter in parsing
a single log entry.

If you were to convert your %n's (except at the end of each entry) to
dashes or something else, you could use something like:

TIMESTAMP - LEVEL - NDC - THREAD - LOGGER - PROP(LOCATION) - MESSAGE

I used PROP(LOCATION) above to cause the location field to be written as
a custom 'property' in the Chainsaw UI (represented as a new column),
since I'm not sure what format is rendered by the %l conversion pattern.


If the format of 'location' looked like this:

myfilename:mymethod(somelinenumber)

You could substitute PROP(LOCATION) for something like:

FILE:METHOD(LINE)

Hope this helps -


Scott