event.log

Zope can keep an event.log file (in INSTANCE_HOME/log/), which is very useful for troubleshooting problems. Don't confuse it with the error_log, which is in the ZODB. But you can check a box in error_log to copy error tracebacks to event.log. This is very handy during development and troubleshooting.

But, Zope 2.7's event log does not show startup errors; to see these, you must start with runzope instead of zopectl.

Zope 2.7 almost enables the event log by default. After creating a zope instance, you must create an empty event.log file in INSTANCE_HOME/log/, and make sure it is writable by Zope's effective-user. (With Zope 2.6 you must export EVENT_LOG and EVENT_LOG_SEVERITY environment variables, see the Zope Book 2.6 edition.)

If you configure a lower log level in zope.conf, eg BLATHER, you'll see more verbose logging. DEBUG will give more detail, ALL will give extreme detail.

Configuration quirks

Up to at least Zope 2.7.3, event log configuration is a little inconsistent with the other logfiles and the docs. Instead of logger event, you must use an eventlog directive. And a level keyword inside logfile within eventlog is not seen:

 <eventlog>
   <logfile>
     path $INSTANCE/log/event.log
     level BLATHER
   </logfile>
  </eventlog>

Put it here instead:

  <eventlog>
    level BLATHER
    <logfile>
      path $INSTANCE/log/event.log
    </logfile>
  </eventlog>

I'm out of time; perhaps someone would do a search in the zope collector and link or submit this one.

comments:

grep tip --simon, Thu, 12 May 2005 11:22:06 -0700 reply
You can grep for complete events matching a certain pattern like this:

 agrep -d '------' somepattern event.log