Introduction

This document approaches the logging system of Intershop Commerce Management from the configuration perspective. It is addressed to administrators or DevOps who configure and maintain Intershop Commerce Management instances.

This document does not describe the logging framework. For details about the framework implementation, refer to Concept - Logging.

The Intershop Commerce Management logging framework is used to log application events. Intershop Commerce Management sends logging messages via SLF4J, which interfaces to logback as logging system. The combination of SLF4J and logback allows Intershop Commerce Management to produce more detailed log information and to integrate third party APIs (log4j, Jakarta Commons Logging, java.util.logging, etc) into its logging framework.

The application log files are located in the directory <IS_SHARE>/system/log/. The available options are controlled via logback configuration files logback-*.xml and the Intershop Commerce Management-specific logging configuration files.

Glossary

The main configurable components of the logging framework include:

References

• Overview - Infrastructure, Scaling and Performance
• Concept - Logging

Application Logging: Configuration

The logging framework options are controlled via a global logback configuration file and cartridge-specific logback configuration files, as well as a global Intershop Commerce Management logging configuration file and server-specific Intershop Commerce Management logging configuration files.

Logback Configuration Files

Upon application server startup, Intershop Commerce Management dynamically creates the internal main logback configuration file. This file sets some basic properties and defines a list of <include> elements, which, basically, constitute the logback-*.xml files as described below.

The internal logback configuration could look, for example, like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <include file=".../<cartridge_name>/release/logback/logback-bc_auditing.xml"/>
  <include file=".../<cartridge_name>/release/logback/logback-bc_pricing.xml"/>
</configuration>

The central logback configuration file <IS_SHARE>/system/config/cluster/logback-main.xml controls the cluster-wide appenders and loggers. Any cartridge-specific configuration is passed via logback-<cartridgename>.xml files located in <CARTRIDGE_DIRIECTORY>/<CARTRIDGE_NAME>/release/logback. In addition, Intershop Commerce Management provides a dedicated DBinit log configuration file (<IS_SHARE>/system/config/cluster/logback-dbinit.xml), which is added to the dynamically generated configuration if the application server is started in dbinit mode.

Basically, the appender definitions in the logback-*.xml files specify

• an appender name for internal reference,
• a type (file or console) via the class attribute,
• a filter and an according level or filter expression,
• a rolling policy, e.g., for time-based or file size-based log file rolling,
• a layout and an according pattern to be used.

In addition, the logback-main.xml file defines

• levels for common logger categories, such as root assigned with the TRACE level (which should not be changed),
• assignments of appenders to categories.

For information about creating project-specific appenders or customizing existing ones, refer to the logback documentation.

The System Management application provides an interface to upload and manage additional logback configuration files, which allow for changing the logging details at server run time, e.g., for maintenance reasons. For details, see the System Management online help.

Intershop Commerce Management Logging Configuration Files

The file <IS_SHARE>/system/config/cluster/logging.properties controls the global, i.e., cluster-wide Intershop Commerce Management-specific logging settings. Intershop Commerce Management-specific logging settings can be defined locally, i.e., on application server level, using <IS_HOME>/config/appserver#.properties.

Basically, the global logging.properties file defines

• MDC enrichment for certain object types used in the current Intershop Commerce Management instance, using Java expressions

  MDC enrichment

  intershop.logging.mdc.types=<type>
  intershop.logging.mdc.<type>.class=<fully_qualified_class_name>
  intershop.logging.mdc.<type>.attr.<attr1_ID>=<Java_expression>
  intershop.logging.mdc.<type>.attr.<attr2_ID>=<Java_expression>

• default categories, encoding and pattern for any dynamically created appenders, to be used as fallback if not defined explicitly, for instance

  Default categories, encoding and pattern

  intershop.logging.dynamictarget.categories=root
  intershop.logging.dynamicfiletarget.encoding=
  intershop.logging.dynamicfiletarget.pattern=
  [%date{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS z}]
  [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n

  If no encoding is specified, Intershop Commerce Management uses the default platform encoding when writing log output.

• default JDK logging adapter settings, namely

  JDK

  intershop.logging.javaloggingadapter.enable=true
  intershop.logging.javaloggingadapter.exclusive=true

• level filters and category assignments for existing appenders as changed via the System Management application

• appender settings that control specific appender behavior, like, for example, intershop.logging.appender.buffer.flushInterval, which defines the interval at which appenders with <immediateFlush>false</immediateFlush> (as set, for example, in logback-main.xml) are flushed

• the level of logback status messages (ERROR, WARN, INFO) that are passed to system.err and automatically appended to the application server log files, as well as the number of status messages stored with each application server, for example:

  Level and number of status messages

  intershop.logging.engine.statuslogging.level=WARN
  intershop.logging.engine.statusbuffer.size=500

Application Logging: Default Log Output

The following table lists the columns of the log output as provided by the default error and warn appenders defined in logback-main.xml. This information is expected, for instance, by the Intershop Commerce Insight (ICI).

Hence, a default log output could look as follows:

[2012-07-16 12:34:55.501 CEST+0200] WARN  127.0.0.1 ES1 appserver0 [] []
 com.intershop.adapter.saferpay.AcSaferpayCartridge [] [] [] [] "main"
 cartridge property: 'intershop.cartridges.ac_saferpay.sac.installation
.path' is *not* found!

Application Logging: Simple Commerce Management Auditing

To support PA-DSS compliance for Intershop Commerce Management-based e-commerce applications, Intershop Commerce Management features a simple logging system accessible to users in Commerce Management. It records payment-relevant Commerce Management user operations, including

• logging in,
• changing passwords,
• creating or deleting users,
• capturing or cancelling payments

into the dedicated log file audits-PCI-<IS.AS.HOSTNAME>-<IS.INSTANCE.ID>-appserver<ID>.log, located in <IS_SHARE>/system/log. The message states the result of the performed operation (success or error), as well as any additional data, if available.

Commerce Management auditing log is enabled by default. To this end, the standard logging configuration file logback-main.xml includes a dedicated appender definition and corresponding category assignments.

Troubleshooting: Custom Logging Appenders and Rolling Log Files

Sometimes systems run into a problem with rolling log files.

With the out-of-the-box logging configuration the issue does not occur. However, when own logging appenders are configured and they accidentally or intentionally log into the same file, multiple handles for the log file are open. Thus, the file cannot be renamed successfully and consequently, rolling is prohibited.

Symptoms of this Behavior

• The application server comes close to a halt.
• The affected file grows and grows.
• Copies of the log file with the .tmp extension are left.

• You find messages like these in the appserver.log (example for more than one appender writing into a rolling job log):

  Log Messages

  [2013-01-21 17​:40​:00​.204 CET]​: 17​:40​:00,204 ​|-WARN in c​.q​.l​.co​.rolling​.helper​.RenameUtil - Failed to rename file [d​:​\eserver9​\share​\system​\log​\<job>-appserver0​.log] to [d​:​\eserver9​\share​\system​\log​\<job>-appserver0​.­log3655490412870351​.­tmp]​.­
  [2013-01-21 17​:40​:00​.204 CET]​: 17​:40​:00,204 ​|-WARN in c​.q​.l​.co​.rolling​.helper​.RenameUtil - Attempting to rename by copying​.
  [2013-01-21 17​:40​:00​.204 CET]​: 17​:40​:00,204 ​|-WARN in c​.q​.l​.co​.rolling​.helper​.RenameUtil - Could not delete d​:/eserver9/share/system/log/<job>-appserver0​.log

• These errors are also displayed in Intershop System Management (as long as the server is not completely unavailable yet).
• The logging status icon in the list of servers (Logging menu) changes (yellow for warnings, red for errors).
• The server details also display the messages as text in the Logging Status tab.

Solution

This issue can be solved by reviewing all logging configurations in the system and trying to find those appenders that log into the same file.

Reconfigure them to write into different files and restart the system.

In case it is intended that different appenders write into the same file (possibly even from different servers), there is some support for this by Logback (although with some restrictions), see Logback Project | Chapter 4: Appenders.

• Logging configurations can be found here: logback*.xml files in [IS-HOME]/share system/config/cluster
• Logback configurations that come with cartridges can be found here: [IS-HOME]/share/system/config/cartridges/
• The directory for uploaded log configuration files is: [IS_SHARE]/system/config/cluster/loggingextension

• The directory for files specifically uploaded to one application server is: [IS_HOME]/config/appserver0/loggingextension

  Note

  Up to ICM 7.4.5 the directory for files specifically uploaded to one application server is: [IS_SHARE]/system/config/servers/<ip>/<Instance>/<appservername>/loggingextension (for example on Windows D:\eserver9\share\system\config\servers\10.0.56.111\ES9\appserver0\loggingextension)