[IMC-Tech] Re: week four of unanswered request: web server logs missing

[Barry Isralewitz]

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 06:29:10PM -0500, Stuart Levy wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 06:13:47PM -0500, Barry Isralewitz wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 05:52:27PM -0500, Josh King wrote:
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > Hash: SHA512
> > > 
> > > Sorry for the delay Barry, we've been plagued with technical problems
> > > and work issues this month. I believe the web server just needed to be
> > > restarted. This seems to have been fixed as of a few days ago. Logs are
> > > in the same place. 
> >   
> >   Checking on zeco right now, this still looks broken.
> > The access and error files appear unchanged since April 24, 2007
> > 
> > barryi at zeco$ date
> > Fri Jun  1 18:01:12 CDT 2007
> > barryi at zeco$ tail -1 thebikeproject.org_access.log 
> > 195.189.142.169 - - [24/Apr/2007:19:31:32 -0500] "GET /favicon.ico
> > HTTP/1.1" 200 3638 "http://thebikeproject.org/" "Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP;
> > Opera Mini/3.0.6306/1662; en; U; ssr)"
> > 
> > barryi at zeco$ date
> > Fri Jun  1 18:03:21 CDT 2007
> > barryi at zeco$ ls -la /var/www/log/*bike*
> > -rw-rwxr--  1 root  www  2313 Apr 24 19:32
> > /var/www/log/thebikeproject.org_access.log
> > -rw-rwxr--  1 root  www     0 Apr 24 19:22
> > /var/www/log/thebikeproject.org_error.log
> > 
> > 
> >    But: Ten minutes ago, the _first_ time I checked after seeing your
> > mail (about 6:00 pm Fri Jun  1, a few minutes before 6:03 pm), the file
> > _was_ updated.  Then, when I tried to access the file , a _second_ time,
> > perhaps a minute later, it reverted to April 24 state!  
> 
> Hmm, it looks as though "/var/www/log" isn't pointing to
> the right place.  A "locate thebikeproject.org_access.log"
> turns up a couple of files with that name:
> 
> -rw-rw-r--  1 root    www     208671 Jun  1 18:21 /mnt/xtra/var/log/www/thebikeproject.org_access.log
> -rw-rwxr--  1 root    www       2313 Apr 24 19:32 /mnt/xtra/www/log/thebikeproject.org_access.log
> (plus another in Barry's home dir)
> 
> But, /var/www/log ends up pointing to /mnt/xtra/www/log,
> which isn't the current log file location.  Specifically
>    /var/www -> /mnt/xtra/www
> so /var/www/log -> /mnt/xtra/www/log
> 
> So you could push the stale logs aside and add a sym link, like
> 
>    mv /mnt/xtra/www/log /mnt/xtra/www/stale-logs
>    ln -s ../var/log/www /mnt/xtra/www/log
> 
> or just tell everyone to look in /mnt/xtra/var/log/www/...


   Thanks.  Yes,  the really freaky "reverted file" thing I thought was
happening this afternoon, was not happening at all (and Josh quickly
corrected me in a mail he sent).  This afternoon, I  just confused the two directories
/var/log/www and /var/www/log.  

   But I did search carefully and thoroughly when I made the intial "where
are the updated logs?" complaint on May 7, and before subsequent
contact attempts since then. In fact I was first alerted to the problem on May 7
when a stats collection script on my laptop -- with the correct file
location hardcoded in it --  stopped working.
 
  The web log updating is (as Josh tells us) recently
reactivated;  it apparently wasn't happening for site anywhere on zeco
for over a month, Apr 24 -- May 28.  My weblogs (thebikeproject.org) all
have a greater-than-month long gap; I suppose the others do as well.  

  I'm happy to have logs back again.  Good to get back stats on visitors to
the site I admin, _very_ good to be able to see the server error messages when
fixing / editing / adding features to the site.

   Cheers,

   Barry

 
-- 
Barry Isralewitz   Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, UIUC  
Beckman 3043   Office Phone: (217) 244-1612  Home Phone: (217) 337-6364
email: barryi at ks.uiuc.edu      http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~barryi