Endevor Tomcat Access Log Valve Recommendation

Products

• Endevor

Issue/Introduction

From: $tomcat/conf/server.xml   

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs"      
       prefix="localhost_access_log" suffix=".txt"                      
       pattern="%h %l %u %t &quot;%r&quot; %s %b" />  

No default maxDays value found for access log valve.               

Is there any recommandation for the maxDays ?  Can I turn off localhost_access_log? 

Environment

Release : All supported Endevor release

Component : CA Endevor Software Change Manager

Endevor Web Services 

Resolution

localhost_access_log contains access information to Tomcat (one specific URL per line), and it can be used for audit.  Do not turn off localhost_access_log. 

There is no recommendation for maxDays setting (to clean up localhost_access_log), as it depends on system and workload.  Site can test for several days and count how much localhost_access_log can resume and set maxDays accordingly. 

Here is the sample configuration settings to limit the localhost_access_log retention to 7 days:

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs"      
       prefix="localhost_access_log" suffix=".txt"                      
       pattern="%h %l %u %t &quot;%r&quot; %s %b"  maxDays="7" />  

 

The other way is to allocate HFS and mount it on the $tomcat/logs directory, and just clean it up when it runs out of space.