Monitoring InterSystems IRIS Logs

InterSystems IRIS provides the following logs for monitoring various aspects of its operation:

Several log files are available in the install-dir\mgr directory; two can be viewed using the Management Portal.
You can view the application error log or driver error log using the Management Portal
The contents of the InterSystems IRIS system error log, or syslog, can be reviewed using one of several methods.

You can also enable structured logging, which will write the same messages seen in messages.log to a machine-readable file that can be ingested by your choice of monitoring tool. See Setting Up Structured Logging.

Log Files in the install-dir\mgr Directory

The following log files are available in the install-dir\mgr directory. They are saved as plain text files and can be viewed using any text editor or viewer. The messages log and System Monitor log can be viewed using the Management Portal.

alerts log

Log Monitor scans the messages log at regular intervals for entries of the configured minimum severity and generates corresponding notifications, which it writes to the alerts log, install-dir\mgr\alerts.log, by default. Log Monitor can be configured to send email notifications instead; see Using Log Monitor.

initialization log

The initialization log, iboot.log, contains information about the initialization of the InterSystems IRIS instance.

journal history log

The journal history log, journal.log, contains a list of all journal files maintained by the InterSystems IRIS instance and is used by all journal-related functions, utilities, and APIs to locate journal files. See Journaling.

messages log

InterSystems IRIS reports a variety of messages to the messages log file (messages.log), including: general messages; startup/shutdown, license, and network errors; certain operating system errors; and the success or failure of jobs started remotely from other systems. System Monitor also writes notifications to the messages log. The directory for messages.log can be configured (see console), but the default location is install-dir\mgr.

On Windows-based platforms, all console messages are sent to the messages log file, messages.log. On UNIX®/Linux platforms, you can configure console messages to be sent to the messages log file, the console terminal, or both.

The size of the messages.log file is monitored by System Monitor. The file grows until it reaches the configured maximum size, at which point InterSystems IRIS saves the file and starts a new one. See MaxConsoleLogSize for information about configuring the maximum messages log size.

You can view the messages log from the View Messages Log page of the Management Portal (System Operation > System Logs > Messages Log). If the messages log is larger than 1 MB, only the most recent 1 MB portion is displayed by the Management Portal. Click the Show entire file link to display the entire file, which may require some time if the file is very large.

Note:

If you have trouble starting InterSystems IRIS, use any text editor or text viewer to view the messages log.

System Monitor log

Status messages about the functioning of System Monitor (see Using System Monitor) are written to the System Monitor log, install-dir\mgr\SystemMonitor.log.

The size of the SystemMonitor.log file is monitored by System Monitor. The file grows until it reaches the maximum size of 5 MB, at which point it is renamed to SystemMonitor.log.old, overwriting any existing SystemMonitor.log.old file, and a new SystemMonitor.log is created. The maximum number of megabytes used by the System Monitor log is therefore 10 MB.

You can view the messages log from the System Monitor Log page of the Management Portal (System Operation > System Logs > System Monitor Log). If the System Monitor log is larger than 1 MB, only the most recent 1 MB portion is displayed by the Management Portal. Click the Show entire file link to display the entire file, which may require some time if the file is very large.

Application and Database Driver Error Logs

The View Application Error Log page (System Operation > System Logs > Application Error Log) allows you to view application errors.

Likewise, the xDBC Error Log page (System Operation > System Logs > xDBC Error Log) allows you to view database driver errors.

InterSystems IRIS System Error Log

InterSystems IRIS sets aside a small portion of its shared memory to log items of interest. This table, which can contain important diagnostic information, is referred to by several different names, including the InterSystems IRIS system error log, errlog, SYSLOG, and the syslog table.

By default, the system error log contains the 500 most recent log items. For information about configuring the number of items in the system error log, see errlog.

To view the system error log, choose one of the following methods:

Open the Terminal, enter set $namespace = "%SYS" to switch to the %SYS namespace, and enter do ^SYSLOG. You can also enter do FILTER^SYSLOG, which has options to limit the output based on specific error codes or process ID.
Run a diagnostic report, as described in Using the Diagnostic Report.
Run the irisstat command with the –e1 option, as described in Running irisstat with Options.
Run the IRISHung script, as described in IRISHung Script.

You can configure InterSystems IRIS to write the system error log to the messages log during shutdown using the ShutDownLogErrors setting (see ShutDownLogErrors).

Monitoring Locks