Enabling full verbose logging

Related Topics
Log file locations and names Dynamically start and stop full logging aimsserver.cfg reference for logging settings

About full verbose logging

You can enable verbose logging to help troubleshoot technical problems or test ArcIMS applications. Log files are available for the Application Server, Monitor, Tasker, Spatial Servers, and ArcSDE.

When you are developing ArcIMS, you should consider turning your log files on permanently. This requires making changes in property files. When you are troubleshooting a problem in a production environment, you can enable full verbose logging temporarily by dynamically starting and stopping full logging. On a production machine, you want to minimize the amount of time full logging is enabled since more logging affects performance.

The Application Server debug, Monitor, and Tasker log files are generated only when full verbose logging is enabled. These log files can be used together with the Spatial Server log files to isolate a problem.

The Spatial Server files are always available but will contain different information based on the level of logging. By default, only errors and warnings are logged. This is a good setting in a production environment. In a development environment, you should set the logging level to the highest level. The different levels are:

Log level Description

0 No message information. This level of messaging costs the least amount of processing resources. While this improves the performance of the Spatial Server, you won't be able to view or have a record of any messages. You can also use the alternate value of off in place of 0 for this value.

1 All error messages. You can also use the alternate value of error for this value.

2 All errors and warnings. You can also use the alternate value of warning for this value. This is the default setting.

3 All errors, warnings, and some informational messages related to processing times (INFO1 and STAT1). You can use the alternate value of minimal for this value.

4 All errors, warnings, informational, and status messages. This level of logging costs the most in terms of processing resources but provides the most information. You can use the alternate values of on for this value.
Informational messages are messages that provides facts about a request, such as the date and time of a request or status of a logging level, for reference purposes. This type of message does not indicate an error of any kind. ArcIMS uses several types of informational messages. The most important informational messages are INFO1, which provide the service name and beginning and ending timestamps. The other types are INFO2 and INFO3, which provide additional information about requests and responses.

Status messages give information about processing times. STAT1 messages are for the total request time. All other processing times are listed at STAT2 messages.

Log level	Description
0	No message information. This level of messaging costs the least amount of processing resources. While this improves the performance of the Spatial Server, you won't be able to view or have a record of any messages. You can also use the alternate value of off in place of 0 for this value.
1	All error messages. You can also use the alternate value of error for this value.
2	All errors and warnings. You can also use the alternate value of warning for this value. This is the default setting.
3	All errors, warnings, and some informational messages related to processing times (INFO1 and STAT1). You can use the alternate value of minimal for this value.
4	All errors, warnings, informational, and status messages. This level of logging costs the most in terms of processing resources but provides the most information. You can use the alternate values of on for this value. Informational messages are messages that provides facts about a request, such as the date and time of a request or status of a logging level, for reference purposes. This type of message does not indicate an error of any kind. ArcIMS uses several types of informational messages. The most important informational messages are INFO1, which provide the service name and beginning and ending timestamps. The other types are INFO2 and INFO3, which provide additional information about requests and responses. Status messages give information about processing times. STAT1 messages are for the total request time. All other processing times are listed at STAT2 messages.

More details about the Spatial Server log files are available in Interpreting Spatial Server log files. For more details on specific common error and warning messages, see Error and warning messages overview. For information on custom logging levels, see aimsserver.cfg reference for logging settings.

How to enable full verbose logging

Enabling full verbose logging

The following set of steps enables logging and generates a new set of log files. Log files are one of the best tools for troubleshooting issues in a problematic ArcIMS configuration.

Enable the ArcIMS Application Server debug log file.
- In a text editor, open AppServer.properties.
  Windows: <ArcGIS Installation Directory>\ArcIMS\AppServer
  UNIX and Linux: $AIMSHOME/Middleware/Application_Server
- Search for the parameter debug, and set it to True.
  
  debug=True
- Search for the parameter logToFile, and set it to True.
  
  logToFile=True
- You can set the maximum size for a log file. When log files get too large they are difficult to open, difficult to interpret, and may affect performance. The maximum log file size defaults to 5 megabytes. To change this value, search for the parameter LogSize, and change the value.
  
  LogSize=5
- Save and close AppServer.properties.
Enable the ArcIMS Tasker log file.
- In a text editor, open Tasker.properties.
  Windows: <ArcGIS Installation Directory>\ArcIMS\Server\AppServer\Tasker
  UNIX and Linux: $AIMSHOME/Middleware/Tasker
- Search for the parameters debug and logToFile, and set them to True.
  
  debug=True
  logToFile=True
- Save and close Tasker.properties.
Enable the ArcIMS Monitor log file.
- In a text editor, open Monitor.properties.
  Windows: <ArcGIS Installation Directory>\ArcIMS\Server\Monitor
  UNIX and Linux: $AIMSHOME/Monitor
- Search for the parameters debug and logToFile, and set them to True.
  
  debug=True
  logToFile=True
- Save and close Monitor.properties.

Enable full logging in the ArcIMS Spatial Server log files.

In a text editor, open aimsserver.cfg.
Windows: <ArcGIS installation>\ArcIMS\server\etc
UNIX and Linux: $AIMSHOME/etc
If have multiple machines running Spatial Servers, you may want to consolidate your log files onto one machine. To change the directory to which the Spatial Server saves its log files, find the logpath attribute and edit its value to reflect the path to which you want the log files saved. The default directory for Windows is <ArcGIS Installation Directory>\ArcIMS\ArcIMS\Server\log. The default for UNIX and Linux is $AIMSHOME/log directory. You can use the following path references.

Windows absolute path name logpath="C:\mydirectory"

For a Windows UNC path name logpath="\\mymachine\mydirectory"

For a UNIX or Linux absolute path name logpath="/net/mymachine/mymachine1"

The logpath value does not affect the location of the *stdout*.log and *stderr*.log files; they are always saved in the default Spatial Server log directory on each machine.
You can output your Spatial Server log files in the following formats: log (the default text format), xml, csv, sh, and tcl. For debugging, you should always include "log" in addition to any other formats you may want to include. More information on supported formats is available in aimsserver.cfg reference for logging settings.
You can set the maximum size for a log file. When log files get too large they are difficult to open, difficult to interpret, and may affect performance. To set a maximum size, find the logmaxsize attribute and add a value in kilobytes. The default for this attribute is no limit. A recommended size is 5000 kb.
In addition to or in place of setting the maximum size for a log file, you can limit the number of lines in a file by setting a value, in thousands, for logmaxlines.
You can limit the number of output files at any given time in the log directory using logmaxfiles.
To indicate whether you want the Spatial Server to start a new log file or overwrite the existing one when the existing log file reaches a maximum size you set, find the logsavefiles attribute. If you want it to start a new log file (recommended), set the value to "true". If you want it to overwrite the existing log file, set the value to "false".
To change the level of logging, find the logmsglevel attribute and edit its value to reflect the level of message logging you want. For debugging purposes, the recommended value is "4".
If your site is running on Windows, you have an additional way to change the level of logging by using the debug attribute. By default it is set to "false". Change it to "true" if you want to log some of your operating system's messages in the ArcIMS log files. When this option is enabled, the Application Server cannot recover a crashed Spatial Server until a user at the console dismisses the dialog box. Production servers should leave this option "false".

In the following example, the log level has been set to "4", the maximum file size is 5000kb, log files will not be overwritten, and all log files will be place in a central place in the "logfiles" directory.

Repeat the above steps as needed to make the same changes on each Spatial Server machine in your site configuration.

If using data stored in ArcSDE, set the ArcSDE logging to verbose.
- On the ArcSDE Server, find and open the <SDEHOME>/etc/dbinit.sde file in a text editor.
- Add the following line to the end of the file:
  
  set SDEVERBOSE=1
- Save and close the dbinit.sde file.
With SDEVERBOSE=1 (or true), information is then written to the SDEHOME/etc/sde.errlog file.
If you have isolated your problem to one service, you should consider removing all other services temporarily. You can do this by renaming your site configuration file (SEZ file).
- Navigate to the Application Server directory.
  Windows: <ArcGIS Installation Directory>\ArcIMS\AppServer
  UNIX and Linux: $AIMSHOME/Middleware/Application_Server
- Rename the ArcIMSSite.sez and ArcIMSFolders.sez files to ArcIMSSite.old and ArcIMSFolders.old.
Renaming the 'SEZ' files to '.old' will remove all the currently available services from the Application Server. Original services can be recovered by re-renaming these files back to '.sez'.
Restart ArcIMS Monitor and ArcIMS Application Server. You must also restart Tasker.

For log file locations, see Log file locations and names.

Search code: @log_verbose

Windows absolute path name	logpath="C:\mydirectory"
For a Windows UNC path name	logpath="\\mymachine\mydirectory"
For a UNIX or Linux absolute path name	logpath="/net/mymachine/mymachine1"