Log files

Viewing logs and setting log preferences

To view the log, from the GUI, click Tools > View Log.

To set the logging level for transfers, open the My Preferences dialog by clicking Tools > Preferences or by clicking Preferences in the menu bar of the application window.

The five logging levels to select from are: Off, Error, Warn, Info, and Debug. The system default is Info.

Redirecting Aspera logging to a different location

On Linux systems, the application transfer logs are recorded in the system log file. Instead of mixing Aspera logging with system logging, you might want to redirect Aspera logging to a separate log file of your choice.

RedHat, CentOS, and Debian

On RedHat, CentOS, and Debian, the transfer logs are recorded in the following log file: /var/log/messages

To redirect Aspera logging, modify /etc/syslog.conf (/etc/rsyslog.conf in the case of Red Hat® or CentOS 6.XA) and add local2.none to the /var/log/messages line. For example, if you have the following line:

*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none               /var/log/messages

Change it to:

*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none;local2.none   /var/log/messages

Next, forward local2.info log messages to your new file. For example, to write to /var/log/aspera.log, add the following line just below the line you modified in the prior step:

local2.info        -/var/log/aspera.log

The log file name must be separated from the log facility (local2.info) by tab characters, not spaces and be preceded by a hyphen. The hyphen before the log file name allows for asynchronous logging.

Next, restart the syslog daemon to have it load the new configuration:

# service syslog restart

In the case of Red Hat or CentOS 6.X:

# service rsyslog restart

Your Aspera log messages now appear in /var/log/aspera.log instead of /var/log/messages.

SLES (Suse) systems

On SLES (Suse) systems, the transfer logs are recorded in the following system log file: /var/log/localmessages

To redirect Aspera logging, locate the following section in /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf:

filter f_local { facility(local0, local1, local2, local3, local4, local5, local6, local7); };

destination localmessages { file("/var/log/localmessages"); };
log { source(src); filter(f_local); destination(localmessages); };

Modify the section as follows:

filter f_local { facility(local0, local1, local3, local4, local5, local6, local7); };
filter f_aspera { facility(local2); };

destination localmessages { file("/var/log/localmessages"); };
log { source(src); filter(f_local); destination(localmessages); };

destination asperalog { file("/var/log/aspera.log"); };
log { source(src); filter(f_aspera); destination(asperalog); };

Then, run the following command:

# rcsyslog restart

Your Aspera log messages now appear in /var/log/aspera.log instead of /var/log/localmessages.

To test this, run the following commands:

# logger -p local2.info aspera test
# cat /var/log/aspera.log

The cat command must display something similar to the following:

Jun 13 10:30:33 linux-kua5 root: aspera test

Rotating your Aspera log file

There are several ways to rotate Aspera logs in Linux:

1. Add /var/log/aspera.log to /etc/logrotate.d/syslog.
2. Create an entry for aspera.log in /etc/logrotate.conf.
3. Create a separate configuration file for aspera.log in /etc/logrotate.d/.

The first option rotates your logs with the system logs (usually once a week, is compressed, and saving the last 10 logs). On some servers, there is so much traffic that the logs need to be rotated more often than once a week, in which case option 2 or 3 must be used.

1. Add /var/log/aspera.log to the entries in /etc/logrotate.d/syslog, as follows:

/var/log/messages /var/log/secure /var/log/maillog /var/log/spooler /var/log/boot.log /var/log/cron /var/log/aspera.log 
{ 
    sharedscripts 
    postrotate 
    /bin/kill -HUP `cat /var/run/syslogd.pid 2> /dev/null` 2> /dev/null || true 
    /bin/kill -HUP `cat /var/run/rsyslogd.pid 2> /dev/null` 2> /dev/null || true 
    endscript 
} 

2. Edit /etc/logrotate.conf by adding the configuration after the line "# system-specific logs may also be configured here." The following example compresses and rotates 10 logs whenever /var/log/aspera.log reaches 100 MB. After log rotation is complete, it runs whatever scripts are specified by postrotate ... endscript.

/var/log/aspera.log {
    rotate 10
    size 100M
    create 664 root
    postrotate
        /usr/bin/killall -HUP syslogd
    endscript
    compress
}

The following example compresses and rotates 10 logs once daily. Instead of moving the original log file and creating a new one, the copytruncate option tells logrotate to first copy the original log file, then truncate it to zero bytes.

/var/log/aspera.log {
    daily
    rotate 10
    copytruncate
    compress
}

3. Create a separate /etc/logrotate.d/aspera configuration file that contains the same information as option 2.