Configure webapp log deletion

This section describes how to configure the Abiquo logs so that old webapp log files are periodically deleted. This will prevent problems due to lack of hard disk space.

A current log is created for each webapp in the directory \{catalina.base}/logs/

In a standard install, this is /opt/abiquo/tomcat/logs. The logs are named after the webapps and then renamed when they are rotated.

In Abiquo 2.4, the standard configuration is as follows. This example shows the log for "nodecollector", which is the name of the webapp for the Discovery Manager Remote Service.

<rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
  <fileNamePattern>${catalina.base}/logs/nodecollector-%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.%i.log</fileNamePattern>
  <timeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP">
    <maxFileSize>50MB</maxFileSize>
  </timeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy>
</rollingPolicy>

This configuration will rotate the logs daily or when the size of the file is larger than 50 MB.

However, the standard configuration shown above does not specify the maxHistory parameter (as described on http://logback.qos.ch/manual/appenders.html).

This means that the logs are kept indefinitely. 

<rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
  <fileNamePattern>${catalina.base}/logs/nodecollector-%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.%i.log</fileNamePattern>
  <timeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP">
    <maxFileSize>50MB</maxFileSize>
    <maxHistory>{NUMBER OF FILES TO KEEP}</maxHistory>
  </timeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy>
</rollingPolicy>

At the moment 2.4 doesn't delete historirc logs from webapps, this may lead ( and actually it did ) to an usable platform because of full filesystem.
I'm going to open an improvement but I think is really important for new customers to configure this properly at installation time. Could you please include this as a note on the installation documentation?
On my first mail you can find the steps to configure the deletion and the link to official documentation, it would be something like:

What do you think?

Regards,
Sergio

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ignasi Barrera <ignasi.barrera@abiquo.com>
Date: Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: Logback deletion of older logs.
To: Sergio Pena <sergio.pena@abiquo.com>
Cc: Equipo desarrollo Abiquo <developers@abiquo.com>, Support Engineers <support.engineers@abiquo.com>

We can open an improvement in Jira and tell customers to configure they log files as they want. The logback config file is in WEB-INF/classes in each webapp and can be edited.

El 29/05/2013 22:25, "Sergio Pena" <sergio.pena@abiquo.com> escribió:

Hi guys,

I think we do not specify any retention time on logback's configuration, We had one customer with a full filesystem today.

We define rotation policy as:

<rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
<fileNamePattern>${catalina.base}/logs/nodecollector-%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.%i.log</fileNamePattern>
<timeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP">
<maxFileSize>50MB</maxFileSize>
</timeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy>
</rollingPolicy>

Size and time based archiving supports deletion of old archive files. You need to specify the number of periods to preserve with the maxHistory property. When your application is stopped and restarted, logging will continue at the correct location, i.e. at the largest index number for the current period.

Is this intended by any reason? If so we should advise this on the wiki so customers can define their own retention times / rotation policies.

wdyt?