• Introduction
• Basic Configuration
• Synchronous Writes

Introduction

Configure the Iguana logs.

Iguana uses a single common message queue to log all channel messages/data and all informational messages.

From here you can set the Maximum Log Age, Log Purge Time and enable Synchronous Disk Writes.

Basic Configuration [top]

Click Edit to change settings, enter the desired settings then click 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
  • In the <iguana install>IguanaConfigurationRepo directory (e.g., C:Program FilesiNTERFACEWAREIguanaIguanaConfigurationRepo)
• 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

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 the fastest possible physical device (i.e., a dedicated drive 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, Mac 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, Mac 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