Re: Giant logfile

["Joe Shaw" <joe joeshaw org>]

Hi,

On 10/13/07, D Bera <dbera web gmail com> wrote:
> > First, there are always old log files floating around in the Log directory.
> > Do we really need them ?

Log files older than 14 days are removed automatically by Beagle, IIRC.

> This is a good question. I am in favour of turning off the debug flag
> in the "release" build (i.e. the installed one). Instead debugging can
> be turned on when running uninstalled or by using some environment
> variable. Though debugging helps and some hard to find bugs were found
> because some users had the debugging enabled, the cost users pay is
> too much.

All the major distributions which ship Beagle turn the log level down
by default; you have to pass --debug into the daemon to override it.
I'm not a fan of turning it off for releases, and indeed in this case
it probably wouldn't have helped.  I'd be willing to bet that the vast
majority of those 140 gigs are WARN or ERROR level messages, which are
logged in all cases.

Moreover, there is a level of degrees here.  If a log file is 140
gigs, something is wrong.  There is probably looping going on there,
etc.  I wouldn't expect an index helper log file to get anywhere near
one gig in normal usage.  (It would be restarted before it got
anywhere near that.)  So it's actually kind of a good thing, because
they point the user to a problem that might only have otherwise been
manifested in missed files, CPU pegging, etc.  This way we can at
least identify is the issue.

Joe