-
Administrator Guide
-
Collect Logs
-
Collect Logs: Apps & Services
- ESXi
- Routers network hardware
- Apple iOS and macOS
- Unix and BSD system logs
- C# and .NET (NLog)
- C# and .NET (log4net)
- Java logback
- Android
- Kubernetes cluster logging with rKubelog
- haproxy
- Advanced Unix logging tips
- Perl
- Windows
- Kubernetes
- Erlang
- Node.js
- Java log4j
- JavaScript
- Unicorn
- PHP
- Docker
- systemd
- Ruby on Rails
- MySQL
- Unix and BSD text log files (remote_syslog2)
- Redis
- Go
- Python
- Elixir
- IIS
- Embedded devices or proprietary systems
-
Collect Logs: Hosting Services
-
Collect Logs: Integrations
-
Manage Logs
- Groups
- Log flood detection
- Web Hooks
- Log colorization
- Linking to logs
- JSON search syntax
- Settings API
- Log destinations
- Alerts
- Command-line client
- Log filtering
- HTTP API
- Automatic S3 archive export
- Managing Senders
- Permanent log archives
- Mapping senders to groups
- Search syntax
- Click-to-search
- Log search API
- Event Viewer
-
Send Logs for Analytics
-
SolarWinds Users & Orgs
-
Support and Security
-
What's New
Controlling Verbosity
Rails
By default, Rails logs are extremely verbose. For example, every partial rendered generates a log message, even in production. Most of the verbosity is rarely useful, and often it’s simply noise that has no value at all.
Here are a few recommendations which improve the signal:noise. We’re happy to help implement or tweak any of these.
Improve formatting
Log 1 line per request: use a gem like lograge or a Rails initializer like this one to generate far denser log messages, usually with no loss in information detail. For example:
1.2.3.4 GET /path 200 OK BlahController#action HTML 938.2 (DB 11.8, View 719.7) {params} {optional params set in flash[:log]}See:
- standalone logging initializer
Reduce noise
To filter noise, you can filter log messages at the sender or on Papertrail (log filtering). Some ideas what to filter:
- Static asset requests: Disable logging requests for static assets (asset pipeline). In Rails >= 4.2.7, use
config.assets.quiet. In older Rails versions or Rails apps using a non-Sprockets asset pipeline, try the quiet_assets gem or remote_syslog’s exclude_patterns. - Unnecessary actions: disable logging requests for certain actions, like with the ciunas gem or silencer. If the vast majority of your requests are for a single action or group of actions (for example, a monitoring action or a very simple GET API request), and you don’t use those messages, the log messages are noise that only distract from real visibility. Please note that
ciunasis not thread-safe (andsilenceris only thread-safe in Rails >= 4.2.6).
See:
- quiet_assets gem
- remote_syslog’s exclude_patterns
- log filtering within Papertrail
- ciunas gem
Control verbosity
- Confirm existing verbosity: make sure your app is not unintentionally logging at
DEBUGlevel. This is much more common than it sounds.DEBUGis the default when a newLoggerclass is instantiated and the level is not changed. Often a newLoggeris instantiated during deployment. Here’s more on Heroku log levels. Also, Rails 5 changes the default production log level fromINFOtoDEBUG. - Decrease verbosity: move to
INFOorWARNlog level in production. By default, Rails 4.2 and prior useINFOlog level in production andDEBUGin other environments. Rails 5 and after useDEBUGeverywhere. For almost all apps,INFOis more appropriate in production, and for many apps,WARNis. Even in situations where one actually wants extreme visibility, Rails’ defaultDEBUGoutput is probably not the right choice; not many administrators need a list of every partial rendered in a given view.