Log message severity levels and types

This topic describes log message severity levels and the situations in which you are likely to encounter them.

In addition to the following information, see "Monitoring Sametime® Gateway system events by tailing the SystemOut.log file" in the IBM® Sametime wiki .

There are three message severity levels:

Informational: the event only contains general information and is not reporting an error.
Warning: a harmless error event that won't interfere with normal operation or a significant event that might require an action on the administrator's part.
Error: Minor, Critical, and Fatal events.

The following situations will prompt log messages:

Any message written to the server console.
Any operation or action that affects the operation of the system such as starting and stopping a server or reconfiguration.
Any changes to connected systems or environment (network connectivity, database availability) that can affect the components' continued operation.
Failures or errors of any related component and any recovery or restart operations performed.
Any response to operator commands for statistics, status, or other information that might need to be correlated to other events or information.

The following types of messages might be issued:

Start messages: Indicate when a component begins the startup process, finishes the startup process, or aborts the startup process. Start messages could include words like: starting, started, initializing, and initialized.
Stop messages: Indicate when a component begins to stop, has stopped, or has failed to stop. Stop messages could include words like: stop, stopping, stopped, completed, and exiting.
Feature messages: Announce when a component feature is ready (or not ready) for service requests. Messages could include words like: now available, currently available, and transport is listening on port 123.
Dependency messages: Are produced by a component that cannot find another component or feature that it needs, such as messages about not finding the expected version of the component or that say a resource was not found, or that an application or subsystem that was unavailable. Dependency messages could include words like: could not find, and no such component.
Request messages: Identify the completion status of a request. Typically these requests are complex management tasks or transactions that a component undertakes on behalf of a requester and not the mainline simple requests or transactions. Request messages could include words like: configuration synchronization started, and backup procedure completed.
Configure messages: Identify any changes that a component makes to its configuration or messages that describe current configuration state. Configure messages could include words like: port number is, address is, and process id.
Connect messages: Identify aspects about a connection to another component, for example, that say a connection failed, was created, or has ended. Connect messages could include words like: connection reset, connection failed, and failed to get a connection.
Create messages: Register when a component creates an entity, for example, indicating that a document or file was created or that an EJB was created. Create messages could include words like: was created, about to create, and now exists.
Report messages: Collect heartbeat or performance data reported from a component, such as current CPU utilization or current memory heap size. Report messages could include words like: utilization value is, buffer size is, and number of threads is.
Availability messages: Report data about a component's operational state and availability. This situation provides a context for operations that can be performed on the component by distinguishing whether a product is installed, operational and ready to process functional requests, or operational but ready or not ready to process management requests. This type of message is different from Dependency messages, which pertain to services. Availability messages could include words like: now ready to take requests, online, and offline.