Moving server logging to the next level! Community input required

[madmax]

Hello all,

I've been in discussions this afternoon with some developers and would like to get some feedback from users and developers in this thread.

This thread will be discussing: Server logging

So far we have identified the following points we would like feedback on.

• Moving certain log files into there own database. This would include things such as: Eluna/SD2 errors, EventAI, IP Loggin, Player sessions, All gamemaster related activity, remote administration logs
  
  • Server crash logs, misconfigurations etc would continue to generate files and would not be logged to the database.
    

  [*]Server admins setting where logs are stored (file, database[which database] etc)

New features that need discussing:

• Session logging
  
  • logs user IP at login
    
  • logs character name, account ID
    
  • At logout records IP, session length
    

To give you an idea what the session logging database could look like, it is below!

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 500]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]Time Stamp[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Character Name[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Unique Account ID[/TD]

[TD=align: center]IP Address[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Session Length[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Status[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]

2014/04/16

08:43:32

[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Cyclone[/TD]

[TD=align: center]3389765[/TD]

[TD=align: center]0.0.0.0[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Session start[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Logged in[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]

2014/04/16

08:44:32

[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Drood[/TD]

[TD=align: center]4892304[/TD]

[TD=align: center]0.0.0.0[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Session start[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Logged in[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]

2014/04/16

08:45:12

[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Drood[/TD]

[TD=align: center]4892304[/TD]

[TD=align: center]0.0.0.0[/TD]

[TD=align: center]0d 0h 0m 33s[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Timeout[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]

2014/04/17

05:43:32

[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Cyclone[/TD]

[TD=align: center]3389765[/TD]

[TD=align: center]0.0.0.0[/TD]

[TD=align: center]0d 19h 43m 13s[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Logged Out[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

• Time stamping in UTC
  
  • Time zone for time stamps can be changed via configuration setting, default would be UTC
    

• GameMaster logging
  

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 500]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]Time Stamp[/TD]

[TD=align: center]GM Account Name[/TD]

[TD=align: center]GM Character Name[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Command Issued[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Target (Player name, self, none etc)[/TD]

[TD=align: center]GM x.y.z[/TD]

[TD=align: center]GM Map ID[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Target x.y.z[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Target Map ID[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD]X: 2987.218750 Y: -3464.853027 Z: 298.220245[/TD]

[TD=align: center]533[/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

[antz]

I would say all the 'Name' fields i.e. AccountName / CharacterName should be Id fields.

A simple join to the accounts/characters tables would then provide the names.

[cabfever]

I like the idea much!

[Foereaper]

This would be great as long as we have a way to generate text file reports, be it from the database or make text file logging a configurable option

[Talendrys]

Have a look to audit systems, I think you can do much more generic stuff. I think anyway that some text files must still be available for basic things like I/O, ..

[Xenithar]

I see one problem with this. As an admin of several server-farms, I can have a bash script grep the log-files of thousands of systems in a few minutes. Put it in a MySQL DB and I have to check manually. No thank you. There is a reason Linux/Unix/BSD/Solaris/etc log to files. I would be all for a way to integrate MaNGOS into a Linux system though. You know, installs the binaries to /usr/bin, libraries to /usr/lib, logs to /var/log/<zero/one/two>, you get the idea. Beyond that, I will stick with my logs. Now if you could set it up like the SMART monitoring tools to email logs when they get so large, that would be cool. Error logs I mean, not a normal log.