Server Logs

This section describes the VolanoChat Server log file formats. The VolanoChat Server records two log files: the access log file and the chat log file. The log.access and log.chat properties listed in the properties.txt file give the location and prefix of the log files to be used by the Server. The date and time will be appended to each log file name when it is created, using the suffix .YYMMDD.HHMMSS for each of the files. All errors encountered by the Server are time stamped and can be written to an error log file.

Access Log

The access log file records each chat connection in the same format as the NCSA and Apache Web server combined log format. An entry is recorded at the end of each chat connection. This log file is suitable for any Web log analysis program such as the popular Analog program. Each line in the log file has the following format:

host - - [DD/Mon/YYYY:hh:mm:ss zone] "request" ddd bbbb "referrer" "agent"

access log item description
host is either the host name or IP address of the machine running the VolanoChat Client applet
DD is the day when the connection ended
Mon is the month (as its calendar name) when the connection ended
YYYY is the year when the connection ended
hh is the hour (24-hour format, in the Server machine's time zone) when the connection ended
mm is the minutes when the connection ended
ss is the seconds when the connection ended
zone is the time zone offset from Greenwich Mean Time when the connection ended
request is the Client request, giving the codebase of the requested applet and the version of the VolanoChat Client applet
ddd is the connection status code, with the values:
  200 - Okay
  401 - Unauthorized Web page
  403 - Forbidden host
  505 - Wrong VolanoChat Client applet version
bbbb is the total number of bytes sent to the Client applet
referrer is the referring Web page of the VolanoChat Client applet, specifying the Web page from which this connection was made
agent is the user agent field, providing information about the user's Java Virtual Machine in the format (all in one line):

Vendor/Version API/Version (OS/Version Architecture) URL

Here is a sample log entry (all would be on one line in the actual log file):

localhost - - [04/Dec/1996:17:31:19 -0800] "GET http://localhost/volano/ HTTP/1.06" 200 623 "http://localhost/volano/index.html" "Netscape Communications Corporation/1.02 API/45.3 (Windows 95/4.0 Pentium) http://home.netscape.com"

Chat Log

The chat log records extra information not found in the access log file, in the format:

[DD/Mon/YYYY:hh:mm:ss zone] host hh:mm:ss connections private kicker

chat log item description
DD is the day when the connection ended
Mon is the month (as its calendar name) when the connection ended
YYYY is the year when the connection ended
hh is the hour (24-hour format, in the Server machine's time zone) when the connection ended
mm is the minutes when the connection ended
ss is the seconds when the connection ended
zone is the time zone offset from Greenwich Mean Time when the connection ended
host is either the host name or IP address of the machine running the VolanoChat Client applet
hh:mm:ss is the duration of the chat connection, in hours, minutes, and seconds
connections is the number of active chat connections when this connection ended
private is the number of private chat rooms when this connection ended
kicker is the host of the monitor who kicked or banned this connection or blank if this connection ended normally

Error Log

On Windows and Unix, you can capture error messages to a file with the following command (where java should be replaced with the name of your Java Virtual Machine).

  java COM.volano.Status 2>> errors.txt 

The "2>>" tells the Server to append all error messages to the file errors.txt.

To capture all VolanoChat Server output, including the startup messages, enter the following command:

  java COM.volano.Status >> output.txt 2>&1 

The ">>" tells the Server to append all output messages to the file output.txt, and the "2>&1" tells the Server to write all error messages to the file as well.

* These are MS-DOS and Unix redirection symbols and can be used with any program, not just VolanoChat.