System log

UnoDOS keeps a record of what it did - what loaded, what failed, what the network was doing - and shows it to you. You choose how much is kept, and it can be sent to a logging server on your network.

Reading the log

Open System Log from the desktop or the Start menu. The newest entries are at the bottom and the view follows them as they arrive, so you can leave it open and watch. Each line carries the time, how serious it is, which part of the system wrote it, and the message.

Colour tells you where to look: errors are red, warnings amber, ordinary lines plain, and debug lines grey. You should be able to find the interesting line without reading every one.

The System Log. Three entries the browser wrote while opening documents, above the line the log itself wrote at startup. The footer shows the current level and how many records exist.

How much is kept

Less and More change how much the machine records. The scale runs from emerg (the machine is unusable) down to debug (everything). The default is notice, which keeps the things worth knowing and leaves out the routine chatter.

Level	What it keeps
emerg, alert, crit	Only serious trouble
err	... and things that failed
warning	... and things that nearly failed
notice (default)	... and significant normal events
info	... and ordinary activity, like each page you open
debug	Everything

Set the level before you reproduce the problemTurning the level up does not recover what was already dropped - a record filtered out is gone. If you are chasing something intermittent, turn the level up first and then reproduce it.

Your choice is saved to \LOGS\LOG.CFG straight away, so it survives a restart. All cycles through the parts of the system, so you can look at just the network or just the browser. Write saves the log to disk immediately.

The log on disk

The log is written to \LOGS\SYSTEM.LOG as plain text you can open in the Editor or copy to another machine. It is written every few seconds, and immediately for anything at error level or worse - so the lines explaining a machine that is about to stop working reach the disk before it does. When the file gets large it rolls over to SYSTEM.1 and starts again.

Sending the log to a server

If you run a logging server - rsyslog, syslog-ng or anything else that speaks syslog - UnoDOS can send its log there, so a machine's record survives the machine. Put the server's address in \LOGS\LOG.CFG:

level=5
remote_level=4
remote=192.168.1.10:514
listen=0

Entries are sent as standard RFC 5424 syslog over UDP, so they arrive as ordinary log lines with the right severity and no special handling at the other end.

remote_level is separate from level on purpose: what is worth writing down locally and what is worth putting on the network are different questions. The default sends warnings and worse while keeping more than that on disk.

Being the server

It also works the other way. Set listen=1 (or press Sink off in the viewer) and UnoDOS accepts syslog from other machines on the network and files it alongside its own, tagged with the sender's address. One UnoDOS machine can be the place you read the logs of several.

An open listenerThe listener accepts messages from anyone who can reach the machine - there is no password on it. Turn it on for a network you trust, not one you share. It is off unless you turn it on.