Log Tailer Home
The Log Tailer apps for Atlassian products provide a means for administrators to monitor any log file stored in an applications HOME/log folder through a web browser.
Admin window operations
All operations require the user to be an administrator on the system involved. The Log Tailer link found in the JIRA admin Troubleshooting and Support section will take the user to the Log Tailer administration screen:
Starting a Tail
Clicking Tail on the relevant row in the log tailer administration screen will result in the app filling a circular buffer in-memory, the content of which can be immediately downloaded.
NOTE: Configuring a Tail is persistent, so the next time JIRA restarts, the tailing will resume.
Stopping a Tail
Once a tail has been started, there is a link to 'Stop Tailing', selecting this causes the server side monitoring process to shutdown and the buffer resources freed. It takes around 5S to complete this operation.
Launching a Popup
Clicking Popup will then create a popup window that will contain periodically updated content retrieved from the server cache. Because of this mechanism, multiple users can monitor a particular log file if needed. An example popup is shown below:
Server Cache Resizing
Selecting a different cache size is an optimisation for different log file volumes. The reason to change a log file is to allow the server buffer to retain more content, allowing remote users the ability to Pause/Resume a tail without completely loosing track (missing new updates) due to the circular buffer data wrapping.
For example: If one email a day is coming in, a 32K buffer on the incoming email log is enough. If profiling is enabled, the atlassian-JIRA logfile will create a lot of traffic that could warrant 512K+.
NOTE: The default value is 256Kb, adequate for most situations.
Popup window operations
Updating
The popup window checks for updates from the server ever 5S, updates are added to the view, depending on the clients data-retention setting (line count) only the most recent n lines are kept, limiting local storage requirements.
Line count retention resizing
The number of lines that will be retained in the pop can be configured. If the line count cannot fit within the Popup window bounds, it will create a vertical window scrollbar. If the line count retention is dropped, then content is immediately culled to match.
Log content font size
The font size of the content can be changed, the smallest setting, whilst not being easily readible, allows for a general impression of the log to be taken, as such, noticing stack traces or other (hopefully) abnormal log traffic is easier.
Pausing/Resuming
If content of interest shows on screen, the Pause button can be used to temporarily stop updates. Later, the same button (now Resume) can be used to continue updates. If the circular buffer on the server has not yet wrapped round then the delta is downloaded on the next update. If the buffer has been wrapped, then the local content is dropped and the latest content is used, subject to data retention settings.
Saving
Web-Kit browsers have a special ability, which is offered if available, the Save button, if available, will cause the current content to be written a file in the Downloads folder. The file written will be based on the name of the logfile, e.g. atlassian-jira.log.bin (the .bin extension is needed to stop the browser loading the content in the window, the resulting file just needs to be renamed).
Other Information
The Logfile monitoring will deal with physical logfile roll-over!
EULA
All versions of this software (for Jira, Confluence etc) are licensed under the provisions of the Standard EULA from the Atlassian Marketplace Terms of Use as a Marketplace Product.
The "Standard EULA" is reproduced here for convenience. In this case, the "Publisher" is The Plugin People Ltd:
(i) The Publisher is the licensor of the Marketplace Product and Atlassian is not a party to the Publisher EULA or this Standard EULA, as applicable.
(ii) If the Marketplace Product does not include a Publisher EULA that specifies Marketplace Product license rights, Publisher grants you a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable and non-sublicensable license to download and use the Marketplace Product only on hardware systems owned, leased or controlled by you.
(iii) Licenses granted by Publisher are granted subject to the condition that you must ensure the maximum number of Authorized Users that are able to access and use the Marketplace Product concurrently is equal to the number of User Licenses for which the necessary fees have been paid to Atlassian and/or its authorized partners (each, an "Atlassian Expert"). You may purchase additional User Licenses at any time on payment of the appropriate fees to Atlassian or an Atlassian Expert. "User License" means a license granted under this EULA to you to permit an Authorized User to use the Marketplace Product. The number of User Licenses granted to you is dependent on the fees paid by you. "Authorized User" means a person who accesses and uses a Marketplace Product under the EULA and for which the necessary fees have been paid to Atlassian and/or an Atlassian Expert.
(iv) Any information that Publisher collects from you or your device will be subject to any Publisher EULA, privacy notice, or similar terms that the Publisher provides to you, and will not be subject to the Atlassian Privacy Policy (unless Atlassian is the Publisher).
(v) You may not modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Marketplace Product in whole or in part, or create any derivative works from or sublicense any rights in the Marketplace Product, unless otherwise expressly authorized in writing by Publisher.
(vi) The Marketplace Product is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and treaties. Unless otherwise expressly stated in the Publisher EULA, Publisher or its licensors own all title, copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Marketplace Product, and the Marketplace Product is licensed to you directly by the Publisher, not sold.
Additional Terms
This product is covered by the General Software Product EULA.