Rotate TS Logs with Services Up

Greetings:
I have read concerns expressed around 24/7 availability and managing the general maintenance (backup, log rotation and so forth) of the application. For log rotation, there are applications, such as Apache, IIS, WebSphere, WebLogic, that internally manage their logs without services being affected so it seems feasible. Now, how could that be implemented for TeamSite...has anyone thought about ability to rotation TS logs (iwtrace, iwserver, iwevents, ...) without stopping/freezing the services and what was concluded? Looking to script this and researching the means to which this can be accomplished...thanks!

Env: TS 6.7.1 Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Ed.

Regards,
-Yama

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smwangi

Greetings:
I have read concerns expressed around 24/7 availability and managing the general maintenance (backup, log rotation and so forth) of the application. For log rotation, there are applications, such as Apache, IIS, WebSphere, WebLogic, that internally manage their logs without services being affected so it seems feasible. Now, how could that be implemented for TeamSite...has anyone thought about ability to rotation TS logs (iwtrace, iwserver, iwevents, ...) without stopping/freezing the services and what was concluded? Looking to script this and researching the means to which this can be accomplished...thanks!

Env: TS 6.7.1 Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Ed.

Regards,
-Yama

I do this every month. But your requirements might be different. Basically I have a script that looks for in /{iwhome} .log files and .mf files that are more than a month old and archives them, compresses them. ie OpenDeploy logs, custom script logs etc. For TS log (/var/...) files I do the same, but instead of deletting them I zero them. on unix this is easily done by echo '' > nameoflogfile.log you might have a similar command on windows

Antharix

Based on your needs, you may set up a scheduled tast for pruning the size of log files. TeamSite or OD.

Migrateduser

Over the years, I've done some looking into this and never have been totally successful. Today I'm back on it and looking into DevNet for any current updates.

The initial post in this thread is pretty clear:

how can you successfully rotate the iwevents, iwtrace, etc. logs without stopping TeamSite?

I'm on Solaris, so I'm interested in a solution for that platform.

I've gone through Support tickets on this, joined a feature request list, tried several cat dev/null > some.log variations, etc - all unsuccessfully so far.

I've also heard that there's a Tomcat function that can be used and I'm looking into that today but, reiterating the spirit of this post:

how can you successfully rotate the iwevents, iwtrace, etc. logs without stopping TeamSite?

Many thanks for ideas and sucess stories.

Wally Box
Nike, Inc.

Migrateduser

According to support article https://support.interwoven.com/kb/kb_show_article2.asp?ArticleID=1333, you'll need to shutdown the iwserver service in order to rotate the logs.

nipper

According to support article https://support.interwoven.com/kb/kb_show_article2.asp?ArticleID=1333, you'll need to shutdown the iwserver service in order to rotate the logs.

Since that article is from: 6/2/2002 9:39:32 AM I think Wally was hoping that may have been changed by now.

Adam Stoller

Since that article is from: 6/2/2002 9:39:32 AM I think Wally was hoping that may have been changed by now.

A lot of us have been waiting, for years, for there to be some reasonable, configurable way to control automatic log rotation for TeamSite (OpenDeploy has been doing it for years now!) ...

Migrateduser

on Solaris...we can easily do it without shuting down the TS...

cat /dev/null/>logifle name with path

Above command will clean up the content while running TS Services and no permission will be changed...

I amusing the same command for my system for log rotation

Adam Stoller

on Solaris...we can easily do it without shuting down the TS...

cat /dev/null/>logifle name with path

Above command will clean up the content while running TS Services and no permission will be changed...

I amusing the same command for my system for log rotation

That's not rotation, in and of itself, it's clearing out or zeroing the log files - i.e. no preservation of historical information.
You could preface the above with a copy command, which leaves a window of opportunity for something to be written into the log after the copy and before the clearing out - but it's generally not that bad.

The problem with the above approach is that, at least occasionally, instead of zeroing out the file, it replaces the content with null characters. I've never bothered to figure out why that happens sometimes and not others though (anyone?)

Regardless, it's still not "graceful" - OD's log file rotation is (except for one of the releases on Windows [6.1?] where one of the log files would grow to 5Mb and then hang deployments ;-)

Migrateduser

That's not rotation, in and of itself, it's clearing out or zeroing the log files - i.e. no preservation of historical information.

You could preface the above with a copy command, which leaves a window of opportunity for something to be written into the log after the copy and before the clearing out - but it's generally not that bad.

The problem with the above approach is that, at least occasionally, instead of zeroing out the file, it replaces the content with null characters. I've never bothered to figure out why that happens sometimes and not others though (anyone?)

Regardless, it's still not "graceful" - OD's log file rotation is (except for one of the releases on Windows [6.1?] where one of the log files would grow to 5Mb and then hang deployments ;-)

Exactly No preservation of historical information...untill unless we dont take the backup before cleaning up the log file...

I really never faced such null chars...I will check at my end ifsomehting like happens

singh

May be i missed some thing but i cant find any issue in rotating logs.

We are using this :

Hostname=`uname -n`
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d-%I%M%p`

> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log

cp /logs/IWlogs/iwtrace.log /logs/IWlogs/iwtrace.log_$DATE
echo "iwtrace.log has been copied for $Hostname" >> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log
> /logs/IWlogs/iwtrace.log
echo "iwtrace.log has been Nullyfied for $Hostname" >> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log
cp /logs/IWlogs/iwevents.log /logs/IWlogs/iwevents.log_$DATE
echo "iwevents.log has been copied for $Hostname" >> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log
> /logs/IWlogs/iwevents.log
echo "iwevents.log has been nullified for $Hostname" >> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log
/usr/bin/gzip -9 /logs/IWlogs/iwevents.log_*
echo "iwevents.log has been zipped successfully for $Hostname" >> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log
/usr/bin/gzip -9 /logs/IWlogs/iwtrace.log_*
echo "iwtrace.log has been zipped successfully for $Hostname" >> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log
find /logs/IWlogs/*.gz -mtime +29 -print -exec rm -f {} \;
echo "iwtrace.log older than 1 month has been removed succesfully for $DATE" >> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log
> /logs/IWlogs/iwjoberrors.log
echo "iwjoberrors.log has been nullified for $Hostname" >> /logs/scripts/teamsite_log.log

singh

THis thing rotate logs every day and nullify and also every month deletes

Migrateduser

Good info here everybody! Thanks for chiming in.

My past experience on Solaris (and I haven't attempted this lately) for the TeamSite logs in question is that using logadm, or using cat /dev/null over a file or cp /dev/null over a file doesn't have the desired results. We end up with a file that either is unreadable, or remains empty.

What is desired is that:
1) the current log file is copied off
2) a new log file 'picks' up activity right where the older file left off.
3) we'd then gather up and archive the old logs in case they need to be analyzed in the future.

Seems pretty easy... but it hasn't been for us in any case.

What we're going to attempt next (when we free up our dev environment) is to use the Apache rotatelogs web server function for rotating logs, as referenced in this web page: http://www.freebsddiary.org/rotatelogs.php

I'll let you know if we have success and, of course, I'd be exstatic if someone else has done this and could post their info.

Cheers,
Wally

TroyP

on Solaris...we can easily do it without shuting down the TS...

cat /dev/null/>logifle name with path

Above command will clean up the content while running TS Services and no permission will be changed...

I amusing the same command for my system for log rotation

I tried this in an emergency on both Linux and Solaris. The log file looked zeroed but no actual space was freed up on the server. When TS was restarted the log file was back. "You" might think I am crazy but I have proved it to an SA who said as much. There should be a way to rotate the logs.

mdang

Currently, the log rotation without restarting the service feature is still missing for a few log files, iwtrace, iwserver, iwevents, servletd_out.

A full log management service which includes the above feature is coming in the next major release.

For the time being, the only proper workaround is to schedule a short server downtime to run a "stop-rotate-start" script. I wouldn't expect this would take more than 2~5 minutes. And I think it wouldn't be too bad doing this monthly or weekly.

--Michael

TroyP

Currently, the log rotation without restarting the service feature is still missing for a few log files, iwtrace, iwserver, iwevents, servletd_out.

A full log management service which includes the above feature is coming in the next major release.

For the time being, the only proper workaround is to schedule a short server downtime to run a "stop-rotate-start" script. I wouldn't expect this would take more than 2~5 minutes. And I think it wouldn't be too bad doing this monthly or weekly.

--Michael

Can we safely say that we only need to stop the iwui services ( /iw-home/teamsite/bin/iwreset -ui stop) to rotage the logs under iwui by default?

Can we safely say that we need to stop iw.server for the logs ouside the iwui directory be default?

./iwui/servletd_out.log
./iwui/iwwebd.log
./iwui/ssl_request.log
./iwui/access.log
./iwui/rewrite.log
./iwui/iwcssdkjss.log
./iwui/search.log
./iwui/vannotate.log
./iwui/logs/lxtspwp1/cms..lxtspwp1.0.log
./iwui/harvester.log
./iwui/ifatclient.log
./iwui/ifatclient_installs.log
./iwui/metadata.log
./iwserver.log
./iwevents.log
./iwtrace.log
./iwutild.log
./iwauthen.log
./eventsubd.log
./iwutild_cmdout.log
./iwldapsync.log
./iwjoberrors.log
./cssdk.log

mdang

Yes, I think that is a safe assumption.

Migrateduser

Currently, the log rotation without restarting the service feature is still missing for a few log files, iwtrace, iwserver, iwevents, servletd_out.

A full log management service which includes the above feature is coming in the next major release.

For the time being, the only proper workaround is to schedule a short server downtime to run a "stop-rotate-start" script. I wouldn't expect this would take more than 2~5 minutes. And I think it wouldn't be too bad doing this monthly or weekly.

--Michael

I am researching log rotation for Solaris and I came across this little gem from Michael. Does that imply that log rotation without stopping TS for the logs mentioned above will be available in TS 7.x?

I am one of those who has tried cat /dev/null >${slogfile} and it results in the text being erased but the space the text took up is still occupied, so while the log file only contains the most recent data since the last time it was "rotated", it continues to grow in size inseatd of resetting to zero bytes. Grrrr.

Pawan

I found this article, since the log files access.log and the servletd_out.log files are the major ones to grow in size. they can be rotated(though not an ideal rotation) without restart of ui services. We can archive/delete the older log files, however, the . I guess this is useful until we finally get some good log management in TS7.x

Migrateduser

I found this article, since the log files access.log and the servletd_out.log files are the major ones to grow in size. they can be rotated(though not an ideal rotation) without restart of ui services. We can archive/delete the older log files, however, the . I guess this is useful until we finally get some good log management in TS7.x

To be clear, this article you mentioned only discusses how to rotate access.log. It does not help with any TeamSite specific logs, such as servletd_out.log.

It would be nice if someone from Interwoven could say for sure whether automatic log rotation for all TS logs will be a part of 7.x

vpatel

To be clear, this article you mentioned only discusses how to rotate access.log. It does not help with any TeamSite specific logs, such as servletd_out.log.

It would be nice if someone from Interwoven could say for sure whether automatic log rotation for all TS logs will be a part of 7.x

Dave -- I think you'll like it with TS 7 Smiley Very Happy

Pawan

To be clear, this article you mentioned only discusses how to rotate access.log. It does not help with any TeamSite specific logs, such as servletd_out.log.

It would be nice if someone from Interwoven could say for sure whether automatic log rotation for all TS logs will be a part of 7.x

You are right Dave, but the solution mentioned does work for servletd_out.log, I haven't tried for other log files though.

Migrateduser

Dave -- I think you'll like it with TS 7

Suah a tease you are. Why do you say that? I haven't even looked to see what's in TS7. Plus no one in their right mind would upgrade to a dot zero release. Right?

Migrateduser

You are right Dave, but the solution mentioned does work for servletd_out.log, I haven't tried for other log files though.

It does? Interesting...

Adam Stoller

Suah a tease you are. Why do you say that? I haven't even looked to see what's in TS7. Plus no one in their right mind would upgrade to a dot zero release. Right?

I may not be in my right mind, but I'm also only considering upgrading on a DEV box to play with it.

Unfortunately, Autonomy/Interwoven seems to have decided to go through a rather contorted process for accessing the 7.0 software and documentation such that you need to send in a request that gets shoved into someone's queue, which doesn't get responded to in a timely fashion (I've been waiting for more than a week now and haven't heard anything back yet). At the very least I'd like to download and read the documentation - but I can't even do that right now!