[uportal-dev] using log4j configuration to highlight WARN messages from ChannelManager

[Andrew Petro]

Paul, Cris, There's a deeper and more interesting issue here about differentiating different kinds of errors detected by the channel rendering mechanism. However, in this note I wanted to address the shallower and less interesting but more instantly resolvable issue of how different uPortal deployments might make different choices about what errors to log, specifically how one might log these messages that are produced by the underling code at a WARN level without having to bump up the logging level for the entire portal system and pick up a bunch of other warning. This is a task in which the convention of loggers associated with the fully qualified class name of the object doing the logging shows its beauty. For instance, a uPortal deployer might want a log file that contains "All ERROR messages produced by any component, plus all WARN level messages produced by the ChannelManager".  With log4j configuration, this is quite feasible. BCCampus was generous enough to engage a bit of my time to draw up some logging configuration for doing this sort of thing with ALM.  Something analogous would work to, instead of highlighting log messages coming from ALM, highlight log messages coming from the ChannelManager.  Plausibly there's quite a bit of potential in isolating out the log messages coming from various portal components -- developers responsible for particular channels and portlets may be particularly interested in the log messages coming from those components, and appreciate not necessarily having the noise of the full portal system to contend with. And so, specifically on the point Cris made here: "And uPortal is open source, so if you completely disagree you can change the code for your own environment. " I'd add: And uPortal uses Commons Logging --> Log4J, so changing zero lines of Java code, you can achieve the desired effect of easy and differential access to these WARN messages coming from ChannelManager purely with log4j configuration. Andrew I disagree.  Channel timeout is a warning, because the timeout value was exceeded.  You (as the administrator) may be fine with that.  If you want to know about WARNINGs you can certainly bump up the logs to display them.  Think about the situation where, possibly an RSS reader is configurable by an end user to point to an RSS feed of their choosing.  They could choose a feed with very poor connectivity.  I do not want to see ERRORS just because a user picked an RSS feed that takes a long time to respond.  Other similar user errors can cause channel timeouts.  Therefore I think it's only a WARNING. And uPortal is open source, so if you completely disagree you can change the code for your own environment. I can see both sides to it being a WARNING or and ERROR, but if it comes to voting, I cast my vote for keeping it a WARNING. ---- Cris J H Paul Gazda wrote: When a channel does not render, often due to timeout, the log message (see below) indicates a WARNING rather than an error, even though the message details refer to “ErrorDocument”, “error channel”, and “error code”. It also seems that when a channel does not render, that should be an error rather than a warning. If a channel is timing out, I want to know about it. It may indicate a database or ldap connectivity issue, for example. When I scan logs for problems either programmatically or manually, I look for “ERROR”. The “Replacing channel” WARNING always slips through the cracks.   I am thinking of creating a JIRA issue to change the message category to “ERROR”. Are there any reasons not to do this that I am not aware of?   WARN [TP-Processor16] portal.ChannelManager.[] Aug/15 09:53:31 - Replacing channel [BaseChannel: st aticData = […channel static data here …] isGuest:false] ] runtimeData = [null]],  which had subscribeId [u43520l1n80] with error channel because of error code Rendering timeout mess age: unsuccessful rendering and throwable [null]  WARN [Thread-10770] error.CError.[] Aug/15 09:53:31 - ErrorDocument XML is <error code="4">     <message>unsuccessful rendering</message>     <channel>         <id>u43520l1n80</id>         <name>PortalMail</name>     </channel> </error>   Paul Gazda Senior Web Developer Information Technology Services Northern Arizona University [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (928) 523-6844   --  You are currently subscribed to uportal-dev@lists.ja-sig.org as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/uportal-dev -- You are currently subscribed to uportal-dev@lists.ja-sig.org as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/uportal-dev