I am currently trying to use the python logging system as a core enterprise level logging solution for our development and production environments.
The rotating file handler seems to be what I am looking for as I want the ability to have control over the number and size of log files that are written out for each of our tools. I have noticed a few problems with this handler and wanted to post here to get your impressions and possibly some ideas about whether these issues can be resolved. The first issue is with multiple copies of the same tool trying to log to the same location. This should not be an issue as the libraries are supposed to be thread safe and therefore also should be safe for multiple instances of a tool. I have run into two problems with this... 1. When a log file is rolled over, occasionally we see the following traceback in the other instance or instances of the tool: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/logging/handlers.py", line 62, in emit if self.shouldRollover(record): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/logging/handlers.py", line 132, in shouldRollover self.stream.seek(0, 2) #due to non-posix-compliant Windows feature ValueError: I/O operation on closed file As best I can tell this seems to be caused by instance A closing the log file and rolling it over and instance B is still trying to use it's file handle to that log file. Except that A has replaced the file during rollover. It seems that a likely solution would be to handle the exception and reopen the log file. It seems that the newer WatchedFileHandler (http://www.trentm.com/python/dailyhtml/lib/ node414.html) provides the functionality that is needed, but I think it would be helpful to have the functionality included with the RotaingFileHandler to prevent these errors. 2. I am seeing that at times when two instances of a tool are logging, the log will be rotated twice. It seems that ass app.log approaches the size limeit (10 MB in my case), the rollover is triggered in both instances of the application causing a small log file to be created. >ls -l -rw-rw-rw- 1 petrella user 10485641 May 8 16:23 app.log -rw-rw-rw- 1 petrella user 2758383 May 8 16:22 app.log.1 <---- Small log -rw-rw-rw- 1 petrella user 10485903 May 8 16:22 app.log.2 -rw-rw-rw- 1 petrella user 2436167 May 8 16:21 app.log.3 It seems that the rollover should also be protected so that the log file is not rolled twice. I also wanted to ask for anyone's thoughts on maybe a better way to implement python logging to meet our needs. The infrastructure in which I am work needs the ability to have log files written to from multiple instances of the same script and potentially from hundreds or more different machines. I know that the documentation suggests using a network logging server but I wanted to know if anyone had any other solutions to allow us to build off of the current python logging packages. Thanks in advance for any of your responses. -Nick -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list