Log files

IBM® SPSS® Modeler Server keeps a record of its important actions in a log file called server_logging.log. On UNIX, this file is in the log folder in the installation directory. On Windows, this file is in: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%/IBM/SPSS/Modeler Server/<version>/log.

The settings that control how logging is carried out in your installation are contained in the log4cxx.properties file.

Change the location of the log file

The default location of the log file is set, in the log4cxx.properties file, as:

log4j.appender.MainLog.File=${app_log_location}/${PROFILE_NAME}/${app_type}logging.log

To change the log file location, edit this entry.

Enable tracing

There may be occasions when you require finer detail than just a basic list of information that shows the main actions; for example, this detail might be asked for by your support staff to help identify an issue. In these situations, you can amend the log to provide more detailed trace information.

To enable tracing, in the log4cxx.properties file, disable the line log4j.rootLogger=INFO, MainLog, ConsoleLog and enable the following line in its place: log4j.rootLogger=TRACE, MainLog, TraceLog

To change the location of the trace log, edit the entry:

log4j.appender.TraceLog.File=${app_log_location}/${PROFILE_NAME}/${app_type}tracing_${PROCESS_ID}.log

Amend logging options

The log4cxx.properties file contains the controls that define how various events are logged. These controls are normally set to either INFO to record actions in the log file, or WARN to notify the user of a potential problem. If you are using the log file to identify potential errors, you can also set some of the controls to TRACE.

Control the size of the log file

By default, the log file continues to grow in size every time you use SPSS Modeler Server. To prevent the log becoming too large, you can either set it to be started from scratch every day, or define a size limit for it.

To set the log to be started as a new log every day, in the log4cxx.properties file, use the following entries:

log4j.appender.MainLog=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender

log4j.appender.MainLog.DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd

Alternatively, to define a size limit for the log (for example 8 Mb), in the log4cxx.properties file, use the following entries:

log4j.appender.MainLog=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender

log4j.appender.MainLog.MaxFileSize=8MB

Client log file

Note that you can also enable logging for IBM SPSS Modeler client. To do so, open the file log4j2.xml in a text editor and change level="info" to level="debug" in this line:

<Logger name="com.spss" additivity="false" level="info">

On Mac, the default client log file location is /Applications/IBM/SPSS/Modeler/18.5/Resources/log/. On Windows, the default location is ${env.USERPROFILE}/BM/SPSS/Modeler/18.5/log, where env.USERPROFILE is usually C:\Users%username% with %username% being the proper folder name.