• Introduction
• Basic Configuration
• Synchronous Writes

Introduction

This screen is used to configure the logs for the server.

Basic Configuration [top]

Click Edit to change settings:

Enter the desired settings then press Save Changes.

Log Directory:

If you use Synchronous Writes it is best practice to put the logs on a separate storage device, to handle the extra disk writes.

To change the log directory:

• Stop the Iguana Service.
• Edit the configuration file IguanaConfiguration.xml.
  • Usually in the install directory (eg: C:\Program Files\iNTERFACEWARE\Iguana).
• Change the log_directory entry to the new log directory.
• Restart the Iguana Service.

Maximum Log Age:

• Logs older than this will be deleted by the daily log purge.
• The default value is 60 days.
• Keeping one year (365 days) of logs should be fine on most systems.
• Logging is not designed to be an archive system, you should backup logs regularly.

For more information on how the log size affects performance see I need to keep 365 days of logs, how will it affect Iguana? For suggestions on archiving logs see: For legal reasons we need to record 7 years of messages, how can I do this?

Log Purge Time:

• This is the time that the logs are purged each day.
• All logs older than the Maximum Log Age are deleted.
• We recommend that logs are purged when the server load is the lowest (1am or 2am perhaps)

Synchronous Writes:

If you have high volume channels and select Synchronous Writes it is best practice to store the Iguana logs on a dedicated physical device (separate from the operating system and applications). This ensures that the synchronize operations do not degrade performance.

• When checked log writes are written directly to hard disk.
  • The result is that every log message is written to the disk individually.
• This is option is safer but considerably slower.
• If this option is not checked then the operating system will use delayed disk writes (exact details are OS dependent).

Synchronous Writes [top]

In Iguana, you can specify that frequently written files, such as log files, are to be synchronized after each write operation.

The details depend on the operating system you are using:

Windows, Unix or Linux:

• The fsync operation is invoked whenever the log output buffer and corresponding index files are flushed.

Mac OS X:

• The pragma synchronous setting are set in the same way as in Windows, Unix and Linux.
• In addition, the F_FULLFSYNC file control operation is used, which ensures that all buffered data is flushed to disk.
• In the Mac environment, F_FULLFSYNC is the only way to ensure reliable and safe writing of files to disk.