HPEL text log configuration settings

Use this page to configure High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) settings for text log.

Supported configurations: You can only access this page when the server is configured to use HPEL log and trace mode.

To view this administrative console page, click Troubleshooting > Logs and trace > server_name > Configure HPEL Text Log.

Enable Text Log

Enables writing log and trace records into the text log file.

Specifies that in addition to writing log and trace records in binary format, the logging system writes them in a text format as well. You can configure the text log to be formatted in either of the formats that the basic mode SystemOut.log file uses.

[z/OS] The text log file only contains log entries that are generated by the controller process and not those from servant or adjunct processes. As such, application log records are not written to the text log on z/OS. To view log or trace data for all application server processes, use the LogViewer command-line tool or the HPEL log viewing tool in the administrative console.

Avoid trouble: All content written to the text log is also written to either the log repository or trace repository. Enabling the text log degrades performance for applications that frequently create log or trace entries.

Enable text log for servant or adjunct region

Enables writing log and trace records into the text log file for servant or adjunct regions.

To enable text logs for servant or adjunct regions, you must define the following JVM custom property under the server's servant or adjunct region:

Table 1. JVM custom property
Name	Value
com.ibm.ws.logging.hpel.enableServantAdjunctTextLog	true

Note: To enable this property, you must restart the server.

The file name format for servant and adjunct text logs is:

TextLog_<yy.mm.dd>_<hh.mm.ss>_<JCLProcname>_<JESid>

Directory path

Specifies the directory to which log files are written.

Text log file names have the following format: TextLog_<yy.mm.dd>_<hh.mm.ss>, where TextLog_ is a fixed prefix, <yy.mm.dd> is a date (year, month, date) of the first record in the file, and <hh.mm.ss> is the time (hour, minute, second)

Avoid trouble: This path cannot be shared between servers. The server creates a file with a .owner extension to help detect when two or more servers happen to be trying to use the same path for HPEL output.

Enable long file name for text log on control region

Enables long file name for text log on the control region.

Text log file names for control region have the following format:

TextLog_<yy.mm.dd>_<hh.mm.ss>

To include the JCL process name and id reference in the file name for the control region text log files, you must define the following JVM custom property under the server's control region:

Table 2. JVM custom property
Name	Value
com.ibm.ws.logging.hpel.useExtendedFilename	true

Note: To enable this property, you must restart the server.

If you use the com.ibm.ws.logging.hpel.enableServantAdjunctTextLog property to enable servant and adjunct text log files, you can enable long file name to differentiate the control region files from the servant and adjunct region files.

The long file name format for control region text logs is:

TextLog_<yy.mm.dd>_<hh.mm.ss>_<JCLProcname>_<JESid>

Enable log record buffering

Specifies that the logging system avoids writing to disk each time a log record is created. The logging system creates a buffer that can hold a number of log records, and writes the buffered events when the buffer is full. The logging system also writes the buffered events after a few seconds have passed, even if the buffer is not full.

Selecting this setting significantly improves logging performance; however, if the server stops unexpectedly, the contents might not be written to the text log file.

Best practice: Enable log record buffering in almost all cases. Only disable log record buffering when your server is failing unexpectedly and cannot write buffered content to disk before stopping.

Start new log file daily at <time>

Enables the logging framework to close the log file and start a new file at the specified time of day. Closing the file makes it easy to copy the file to an archive.

Best practice: If you want to automatically archive your log files, set up your backup program to copy files after the time you configured for new logs to be started. Configure the backup to occur at least 10 minutes after the time configured for new logs to be started to ensure that the server has closed the previous file.

Begin cleanup of oldest records

Specifies the log cleanup settings to be used to automatically purge the oldest log records, or log records that no longer fit in the configured space, from the text log directory.

Select When log size approaches maximum to configure automatic log file cleanup to begin when the total size of the text log files approaches the configured maximum size.

Select When oldest records reach age limit to configure automatic log file cleanup to begin when log content is the age limit specified.

Select When either age or size restriction is met to configure automatic log file cleanup to begin when either of the previous conditions is met.

Regardless of the selection chosen, text log files are deleted from the text log directory in the order in which they were written.

Log record age limit

Specifies the lifespan, in hours, that log records can remain in the text log directory before the log records can be automatically deleted by the server. When all records in a text log file have existed longer than the age limit specified, then that file is targeted for deletion by the server.

Maximum log size

Specifies the maximum total size, in megabytes, that the server allows the text log files to reach. When the total size of the text log files approaches this size limit, the server deletes the oldest text log files from the text log directory to make space for new log records.

Out of space action

Specifies how the server reacts to an inability to add content to the text log directory.

Select Stop server to specify that the server stops when the server is unable to write to the text log directory.

Select Purge old records to specify that the server continues to run and that the file containing the oldest log records is immediately removed when the server is unable to write to the text log directory.

Select Stop logging to specify that the server continues to run, but that the server cannot continue to write to the log when the server is unable to write to the text log directory.

Text Output Format

Specifies the format to use in the text log file.

Select Basic to specify a shorter, one-line-per-record format.

Select Advanced to specify a longer format using full logger name and more details about each record.

Include trace records

Specifies whether trace records are included in the text log file, as well as log records.

Save runtime changes to configuration as well

Specifies that changes are made to both the dynamic state of the running server and the server configuration, which take effect on the next restart. If this check box is not selected, the server does not copy the settings into the server configuration.