tntnet.properties(7)

NAME
tntnet.properties - configuration-file for tntnet (8)

DESCRIPTION
tntnet(8) uses cxxtools for logging and is configured in the configuration-file tntnet.properties.

Because cxxtools is a meta-logging-library, which can be compiled to use different logging-libraries, the content of tntnet.properties is dependend of the underlying logging-library. Cxxtool has a built-in logging-library as default, which is documented here.

  format
The format of tntnet.properties is line-based. A line consists of a variable-name followed by a equals-symbol and a value. Lines, which does not follow this format and lines, which start with a hash (#), are ignored. It is recomended to prefix non-empty comments with a hash to make clear, that it is a comment.

  level
The logging-library has 5 levels for logging: fatal, error, warn, info and debug. Fatal has the highers priority and "debug" the lowest.

  category
Each log-message has a category. Categories are hierarchical. Names of subcategories are devided by a dot.

  log-message
Each log-message has a level and a category. If the level of the message is higher or equal to the level of the category, the message is logged. To assign a level to a category put a line with the word "logger", a dot, the category, the symbol "=" and the category into tntnet.properties. Only the first letter of the value is checked and case is ignored, so e.g. info can be specified with INFO, info, I or even ixxxx. If no level is specified for the current category, the upper category is checked. If nothing is found, the default level is used. The default level is specified by the variable "rootLogger". If no rootLogger is specified, the level error is used.

  destination
If nothing else is specified, log-messages are printed to standard-output. To redirect output to a file, specify the filename with the variable file.

The cxxtools-logger can limit the size of the log-file by rolling log-files. If the limit is reached, the current file is renamed by appending ".1" to it. If there is already a file with that name, this file is renamed to "*.2" and so on, until the maximum backupfile limit is reached. The oldest file is deleted then. To specify the maximum file size, set the variable maxfilesize. The value specified here can be postfixed with 'k' or 'M' to specify kBytes or MBytes. The maximum fileindex backed up is set with maxbackupindex.

Since writing the file can take some time, output can be buffered and written physically in regular intervals. The interval is specified in milliseconds with the variable flushdelay. The logging-library starts a background-thread, which flushes the buffer regulary. This improves logging-speed significantly. The problem is, that a background-thread is used, which consumes resources and if the program crashes, the most recent log-messages might not be in the file.

Log-messages can be sent to another host in the network with udp. This is done by specifying a hostname and a port with the variable host. The value must be a hostname, followed by a ':' and a port. Each log-message is sent in a single udp-message.

EXAMPLES

  logging to standard-output:
    rootLogger=INFO
    logger.tntnet=WARN

  logging to a file with rolling file and a background-flusher:
    rootLogger=INFO
    logger.tntnet=WARN
    file=tntnet.log
    maxfilesize=1MB
    maxbackupindex=10
    flulshdelay=100

  logging to another host
    rootLogger=INFO
    logger.tntnet=WARN
    host=pluto.tntnet.org:1234

AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Tommi Mäkitalo <tommi@tntnet.org>.

SEE ALSO
tntnet(8)