[wildfly-dev] Design Proposal: Log Viewer

[Stan Silvert]

On 6/10/2014 7:33 PM, James R. Perkins wrote:
> This design proposal covers how capturing log messages. The "viewer"
> will likely be an operation that returns an object list of log record
> details. The design of how a GUI view would look/work is beyond the
> scope of this proposal.
The problem I see here is that we are designing something based on what 
we think a log viewer might want.

Personally, I've yet to see a log viewer that works better than a text 
editor.  I sure hope we don't get bogged down writing our own viewer.

IMHO, what James has given us already is pretty close to what we need.  
If you look at the latest CLI GUI you will find that it now includes the 
ability to download logs and, if desired, load them into your own log 
viewer.  Works pretty well.
https://community.jboss.org/wiki/AGUIForTheCommandLineInterface#log-download

Beyond having that same functionality in the web console, what else does 
a user need?
>   The file must be defined as a known file handler.
IMHO, solving this would indeed be a good enhancement.
> There is
> also no way to filter results, e.g. errors only.
IMHO, solving this is NOT a good enhancement.  Filtering should be left 
to the user's log viewer on the client side.
> If per-deployment
> logging is used, those log messages are not viewable as the files are
> not accessible.
IMHO, solving this would be a good enhancement.  Give the app developer 
a way to have his log downloaded from a management operation.

IMHO, everything below adds lots of complexity and potentially slows 
down the server.  Simple downloading of logs is what the user really wants.
>
> For the list of requirements I'm going to be lazy and just give the link
> the wiki page https://community.jboss.org/wiki/LogViewerDesign.
>
> Implementation:
>
> 1) There will be a new resource on the logging subsystem resource that
> can be enabled or disabled, currently called log-collector. Probably
> some attributes, but I'm not sure what will need to be configurable at
> this point. This will likely act like a handler and be assignable only
> to loggers and not the async-handler.
>
> 2) If a deployment uses per-deployment logging then a separate
> log-collector will need to be added to the deployments log context
>
> 3) Logging profiles will also have their own log-collector.
>
> 4) The messages should be written asynchronously and to a file in some
> kind of formatted structure. The structure will likely be JSON.
>
> 5) An operation to query the messages will need to be create. This
> operation should allow the results to be filtered on various fields as
> well as limit the data set returned and allow for a starting position.
>
> 6) All operations associated with view the log should use RBAC to
> control the access.
>
> 7) Audit logs will eventually need to be viewable and queryable. This
> might be separate from the logging subsystem as it is now, but it will
> need to be done.
>
>
> There are things like how long or how many records should we keep that
> needs to be determined. This could possibly be configurable via
> attributes on the resource.
>
> This is about all I've got at this point. I'd appreciate any feedback.
>