Ask an FMS Guru #4: What logging options are available via FMS2?

My goodness.. I've got quite a few questions backed up at the moment due to being away in Auz there for the webdu2006 conference and then just a major influx in work.. but just want to get this first one out there before I get to some others.

So here's the Q: What logging options are available via Flash Media Server 2?

Well, what a nice new can of worms we have open here.

The answer: With FMS2 we can now log to standard format log files. In fact they have now broken out of the FLV format that you had to use a Flash SWF file to view for FCS1.5, to a txt file format that can be opened in any text editor and log analyzer.

The logging options are many and varied and to be honest, straight out of the box, FMS2 has pretty much most of what you need to be logged setup already.

But the question remains of what options an administrator has.

Well, to start off, how about a quick link to the livedocs just in case you want more info than what I will be putting here.

Now, there are quite a few types of log files and they are, by default, all sitting in the logs directory in the install directory. This can be fine for smaller sites that have the logs files written over often and they don't get big at all, but larger sites and setups with larger log files should move this off to a different drive than C (which is the default install drive if you have installed it there, talking about Windows in this case).

To change that up, just wander into the FMS.ini file and go to the bottom and you'll see a setting to set where you want log files to be created. Make sure to reset the server though for the changes to take place.

So, now we have some different types of log files:

access - Used to log access (client connections) to the server and stream activity, the setting for this file can be found in the logger.xml file in the conf directory up top in the access tag

application - logs info on what's happening in application instances, good for debugging actually

admin - Keeps track of the administration and logs messages here about errors etc with the server

core - more error logging here and stuff that is going on with the server

edge - logs about the server if it is an edge server

master - logs about the server if it is a master server (for an edge)

To a developer/administrator of the server, I'd have to say the application and access log files are the most interesting.

That's a bit of background on what is happening behind the scenes with logging, there are tons of things that can be changed for the access logs, and that full list can be seen in the logger.xml file or even online for descriptions (no use me just copying and pasting it all here) in the livedocs, here's the link just in case.

Hope this helps a bit :)

Posted by Graeme at March 16, 2006 04:01 PM