Verifying the log

So far we have looked at the current status of our server processes. This status information however doesn’t tell us the exact nature of a possible problem, or what happened in the past. This is what logging does.

Every server process can write information into a log file. The extent of that information is determined by the trace level selected:

None: only display information (which can’t be inhibited) is written by this server.

Critical errors: only critical errors are written.

Errors: all errors (including critical ones) are written. This is the default setting.

Information: information about the current activities of the process (including errors) will be logged.

Trace: extensive trace information for debugging purposes is written.

You should use all levels below ‘error’ with care and only in case of analyzing potential problems, since large amounts of log information might be written, which slows your server down and uses up space on your server’s hard disk.

The log information is written to a file specified in the configuration of your server manager. If you turn logging on in your Server Monitor, the server manager will send this information to your monitor over the network.