Logs Screen Overview

Iguana uses a single message queue to log all system and data messages.

To access the Logs in Iguana click the LOGS link at the top of any of the Iguana administration screens.

The Logs screen appears, displaying a list of various types of log messages. The Log can include messages or acknowledgment messages from channels, server information, user logins and logouts, messages indicating that channels have been started or stopped, etc.

Navigate the Logs Screen

To navigate the log screen:

The current log message is highlighted in green.
Use the scroll bar to move through the messages.
Click to move to the end of the list of log messages.
Click to move up to the start of the list of log messages.

You can also use keyboard shortcut keys to navigate this list of log messages. The following table lists the shortcut keys that have been defined.

Key	Action performed
Home	Go to the top of the list (the most recent message)
End	Go to the end of the list (the oldest message)
Page Up	Scroll up one page
Page Down	Scroll down one page
Up arrow	Move up in the list
Down arrow	Move down in the list
Enter or Return	Display more information about the current log message, see Viewing Log Message Details for more information.

View new log messages

If new log messages have appeared since you started viewing the Logs screen, they are added to the log. A notice is displayed at the top right of the screen, indicating that there are new entries to view:

You can scroll up to read these new entries.

Low log space warning

If your Iguana server is running out of log space, you will see a warning when you display the Logs screen. An error message is also added to the logs, indicating that the server is running out of log space. Also the log usage bar at the bottom of the screen gives a visual indication of how much log space is used.

Hovering over the bar will display usage details, and clicking on it will take you to the log usage screen.

Note: You can create an email notification rule that tells Iguana to send you an email message whenever a service error message appears in the logs. See Notification Rules for more information.

Understanding the Queue [top]

In Iguana, all messages that are accepted by the source component of a channel are placed in a common message queue that is used by all Iguana channels. The destination component of each channel reads its messages from this message queue and processes them.

For each channel except channels whose source component is From Channel or whose destination component is To Channel, a single source position is defined in this message queue. This source position indicates the location of the last message processed by this channel.

For channels whose source component is From Channel, one source position is defined for each channel specified in the From Channel source component.

For channels whose destination component is To Channel, no source positions are defined. For these channels, source positions are specified by the channels that use these channels as a source.

The following diagram illustrates the message queue and its source positions:

In this example, three channels are defined, named A, B and C. Channel C has a source component of From Channel, and two additional channels, C1 and C2, are the sources for this channel.

Channel A and Channel B have a single source position, indicating the last message that was processed by each channel. Channel C has two source positions: one for the last message processed from source C1, and one for the last message processed from source C2.

Messages that are newer than the source position of their channel are queued for processing by that channel. In this diagram, there is one message queued for channel A, one queued for channel B and two queued for channel C (one from each source).

Pending & Processed Messages [top]

When Iguana processes a message, it accepts the message from the source component of a channel and adds it to the message queue. Before a message is processed it is labelled as Pending, and after it has been processed it is labelled as Processed. Processed messages can be resubmitted to be processed again if needed.

A Pending message in the queue looks like this:

pending message in the queue

And a Processed message like this:

processed queue message

Note: Pending and Processed messages can be accessed from the Dashboard and from the Logs screen.

What are unqueued messages? [top]

When Iguana processes a message, it normally accepts the message from the source component of a channel and adds it to the message queue. However, some messages are not added to this message queue and are therefore not processed. These messages are called unqueued messages.

Unqueued messages appear in the following circumstances:

When a message is ignored because it matches a message name specified in the Ignored messages list of the channel’s message filter, it is stored in the logs as an unqueued message.
When you have defined a filter for your channel, you can specify that the message is to be written to the logs both before and after it has been filtered. In this case, the message before or after filtering is stored in the logs as an unqueued message. (See Configuring the Filter for more details.)
If a message cannot be processed because an error has been detected, it is logged as an unqueued message.

In the logs, the icon indicates that a message is unqueued:

Even though unqueued messages are not sent through the Iguana server to their destination, they behave like ordinary logged messages in all other respects:

If you search for all log messages of type Message, messages of type Unqueued message also appear in the search results. (See Searching the Logs for more information on searching the logs.)
Unqueued messages can be resubmitted. (See Resubmitting a Single Message for more details on resubmitting a message from the logs.)

Log message Types [top]

Each log message in the logs consists of the following:

The date and time of the log message.
The source of the log message, which is either the Iguana service or a channel.
A symbol indicating the type of the log message.
The text of the log message.

Here is a sample log message, containing the elements listed above:

The symbol indicating the log message type is one of the following:

Symbol	Meaning	Description
	Error (unmarked)	A service or channel error, or an error that has occurred while processing a message. Errors will appear on the Dashboard or the Control Panel unless they are marked. See Marking an Error for details on how to mark an error.
	Error (marked)	An error that has been marked. Marked errors do not appear on the Dashboard or the Control Panel.
	Warning	Similar to Error but not final. For example, a connection error has occurred and Iguana will retry sending the message in a few seconds.
	Success	A log entry indicating that Iguana has processed a message successfully.
	Informational	A log entry that informs you of a task performed by the server.
	Message	A message sent through the server.
	Unqueued message	Indicates a message that has been received but was not added to the queue of messages to be processed. Examples of unqueued messages include originals of messages that have been transformed by a message filter, and messages that could not be processed because they contain errors. See Understanding Unqueued Messages for more details on unqueued messages.
	Resubmitted message	A message that has been resubmitted. (See Resubmit a Single Message for details on how to resubmit a message.)
	Resubmitted unqueued message	An unqueued message that has been resubmitted.
	Message created by resubmission operation	The message that is created when a previously existing message is resubmitted.
	Message created by resubmission operation, then resubmitted	Similar to the above, except that this message has itself been resubmitted.
	Acknowledgment message	An ACK message sent by Iguana in response to a message received from the source component of a channel.
	Debugging	An internal debugging log entry.

Note: You can only view a message if you have permission to view the channel through which the message was sent. You have permission to view a channel if its role has View permissions on the channel group that the channel belongs to. For more information on assigning a role to a user, and on channel group permissions in Iguana, see Roles.

Changing the Logging Level [top]

For each channel, you can specify a logging level. This enables you to control the types of log messages that are generated for this channel.

Note: You must be a member of the Administrators role to specify the logging level for a channel. See Roles for more information on roles in Iguana.

The following logging levels are defined:

Level	Meaning
Normal	Display all errors and messages.
Errors	Display errors only.
Debug	Display all errors and messages, plus debugging messages.

Note: If you are experiencing performance problems with your database connection, you can use Debug to log messages and track database performance. See Using the Logs to track performance of SQL Statements for more details.

To specify the logging level:

Click the Dashboard tab, and click the name of the channel for which you want to set the logging level.
The Channel Information screen for that channel is displayed.
From the Logging Level list box, select the logging level you want to use:
Click Configure Channel to update the logging level for the channel.

You can also set the logging level using the Channel Properties screen. From this screen, you can change the logging level for all channels.

To do this:

Click the Dashboard tab, the Dashboard page appears.
In the bottom Server Panel, click the Channel Info > Properties link:
The Channel Properties screen appears:
Locate the row for the channel whose logging level you want to change.
In the list box in the Logging Level column, select the logging level you want to use.
Click Save Changes to apply your changes.

Iguana Documentation

Log Features