[hobbit] Logfile monitoring - I'd like some comments

[Asif Iqbal]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2006 at 07:50:15AM, Henrik Storner wrote:
> Hi Rolf,
> 
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2006 at 07:30:11AM +0100, Rolf Schrittenlocher wrote:
> > Hi Henrik,
> > 
> > that sounds wonderful, your ideas are pretty good. 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> > I have one suggestion and one point to think about.
> > 
> > For monitoring application-logs the config file soon would become very 
> > complex and likely unreadable. There it would be nice if there is a 
> > possibilty for include-files. So general definitions -e.g. for 
> > OS-related logs - would be made in the general config  file, all the 
> > individual stuff in <host>.config files.
> 
> That would make sense, I agree.
> 
> > Second, there are logs which change their names once the server or the 
> > application stops. So a "message.log" might become "message<date>.log" 
> > while there is a new message.log now. Still the last informations in 
> > "message<date>.log" are relevant, especially if the reason for the new 
> > log was a crash of the application. I don't know how to deal with this 
> > situation as there are multiple ways how logs might change their names 
> > but perhaps others have an idea of how to do that.
> 
> It's something I thought about too, although my concerns were with logfiles 
> that get rotated at a specific time of day, not those that change when 
> an application restarts. But like yourself I couldn't find a really 
> good solution.
> 

We have similar problem where we actually need to monitor
messsges.`date` file. With bb-msgtab you cannot do that. I wonder if
hobbit could be able monitor a file with dynamic extension like that.

> The file being renamed is not the only problem - it may get compressed,
> moved to a different directory, ... lots of ways for it to get lost.
> 
> So - if anyone has a bright idea, do speak up.

Currently we have created symbolic files like these 

messages.020106 --> messages
messages.020206 --> messages
messages.022806 --> messages

So when the application tries to put files on the specific date file it
does not matter since bb-msgtab always reading the `messages' file which
never changed.

Thanks

> 
> 
> Regards,
> Henrik
> 
> 
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> 

-- 
Asif Iqbal
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