[Freeswitch-users] Frustrating and inconsistent log format !

[Ken Rice]

The Logs from FreeSWITCH are quite consistent...

UUID, TimeDate Stamp, loglevel, file:line_num message.

If the log line is not directly associated with a session the UUID is
omitted.

I'm not sure how you can call this random and inconsistent. 

Now you may be confused by additional logging that may be enabled such as
the logging from maybe libsofia, or one of the other many libs that
FreeSWITCH uses. FreeSWITCH has no control over underlying library logging
formats.
An example of this is if you have sofia global siptrace  enabled. The
formatting there is directly from the library and we have no control over it
other than to enabled or disable it. 

This is common with libraries not just for FreeSWITCH but many other open
source projects... 

As with pretty much everything in FreeSWITCH it's a module, don't like the
logging modules that are there now you are welcome and encouraged to create
your own, and patches are accepted on a regular basis.

At this time I will consider this thread closed.

-----Original Message-----
From: freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org
[mailto:freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org] On Behalf Of Tim
Smith
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 4:12 AM
To: FreeSWITCH Users Help <freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org>
Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] Frustrating and inconsistent log format !

Moises,

Thank you for your reply, you're the only person who read my post and didn't
somehow think I was saying "remove the UUIDs" !  ;-)

Regarding : "Consistency is good, but certain functionality cannot be
provided if every single line has exactly the same format."

Yes, but the inconsistency makes it painful, verging on impossible, to
correctly integrate with various log parsing systems, whether Splunk,
Logstash or otherwise.


If the devs have some personal preference for one format here, another
format there, and something else over there, I would unfortunatley still
call that a whim, especially as there is no clear documentation on the
matter either !!!!

Even the Freeswitch docs don't know what's what ... " The log file will
contain log lines in this general format: YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss [LEVEL]
source_file_name:line_number function_name() <log data>" , that statement is
not true.  That's not the general format. its not even the dominant format,
infact in my logs, lines that start YYYY-MM-DD are a rarity !


I have not come accross any other product (either closed or open
source) that has the quite same amount of randomness in the way it
logs.   That is what I find so frustrating.

On 14 January 2016 at 07:05, Moises Silva <moises.silva at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why do log lines start with UUID ?  Its format is hard to define and 
>> subject to the developer's whims ....why not start the line with a 
>> date, like almost any other sane program,  and put the UUID elsewhere 
>> ?
>
>
> If you don't like the uuid at the front, just remove it from the 
> logfile.conf.xml configuration
>
> <param name="uuid" value="false" />
>
> You've clearly not attempted to debug complex scenarios, where the 
> uuid at the front is more useful, because when you have hundreds or 
> thousands of calls and you are trying to figure out what happened with 
> a particular call leg, you search for the uuid first, date second.
>
> The format you despise, is terribly useful, so try to understand it 
> rather than just hate it because is different to what you're used to.
>
>>
>> Why on earth is the log format so inconsistent ? e.g.
>>
>> Sometimes developers feel like giving us a date ....
>>
>> 7d28af7d-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-2e20e2bXXXX 2016-01-13 12:00:47.198394 
>> [DEBUG]
>> switch_core_state_machine.c:636
>>
>> Sometimes they even manage the date in a sensible location ....
>>
>> 2016-01-13 11:58:14.838392 [DEBUG] sofia.c:9124
>>
>> Other times they can't be bothered to provide such a critical piece 
>> of information.....
>>
>> 4891efd5-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-58d153b8XXXX Dialplan: sofia/internal/
>
>
> This is by design, not a whim, and many of us like it, makes routing 
> logs easy to spot. Some people instead of calling these design 
> decisions whims, actually provided a solution so it fits what they prefer:
>
> https://freeswitch.org/jira/browse/FS-6805
> https://freeswitch.org/stash/projects/FS/repos/freeswitch/pull-request
> s/44/overview
>
> So you can add this to switch.conf.xml:
>
> <param name="dialplan-timestamps" value="true"/>
>
> And you get the behavior you want. Please spend the time learning the 
> software rather than blaming the devs because you can't understand it 
> or because they have preferences different than yours.
>
>> Please devs... spend a little time cleaning up the logging ... it 
>> helps debugging and troubleshooting so much if we have some 
>> consistency there !!!!!
>
>
> Consistency is good, but certain functionality cannot be provided if 
> every single line has exactly the same format. Some log lines are not 
> associated to a session, so they can't have a uuid at all. The 
> FreeSWITCH logs are as consistent as is possible in a given context.
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
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> rs
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