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The billing log files

If you installed dCache following the instructions in the Chapter Installing dCache you enabled the billing in the domain where the httpd service is running (see the extract of the layout file).

...
[httpdDomain]
[httpdDomain/billing]
[httpdDomain/httpd]
...

Use the property billing.text.dir to set the location of the log files and the property billing.enable.text to control whether the plain-text log files are generated.

By default the log files are located in the directory /var/lib/dcache/billing. Under this directory the log files are organized in a tree data structure based on date (YYYY/MM). A separate file is generated for errors. The log file and the error file are tagged with the date.

Example:

log file: /var/lib/dcache/billing/2012/09/billing-2012.09.25

error file: /var/lib/dcache/billing/2012/09/billing-error-2012.09.25

The log files may contain information about the time, the pool, the pnfsID and size of the transferred file, the storage class, the actual number of bytes transferred, the number of milliseconds the transfer took, the protocol, the subject (identity of the user given as a collection of principals), the data transfer listen port, the return status and a possible error message. The logged information depends on the protocol.

A log entry for a write operation has the default format:

<MM.dd> <HH:mm:ss> [pool:<pool-name>:transfer]
[<pnfsId>,<filesize>] [<path>]
<StoreName>:<StorageGroup>@<type-of-storage-system>
<transferred-bytes>  <connectionTime> <true/false> {<protocol>}
<initiator>  {<return-status>:"<error-message>"}

Example:

A typical logging entry would look like this for writing. In the log file each entry is in one line. For readability we split it into separate lines in this documentation.:

12.10 14:19:42 [pool:pool2@poolDomain-1:transfer]
[0000062774D07847475BA78AC99C60F2C2FC,10475] [Unknown]
<Unknown>:<Unknown>@osm 10475 40 true {GFtp-1.0 131.169.72.103 37850}
[door:WebDAV-example.org@webdavDomain:1355145582248-1355145582485] {0:""}

The formatting of the log messages can be customized by redefining the <billing.format.someInfoMessage> properties in the layout configuration, where <billing.format.someInfoMessage> can be replaced by

  • billing.text.format.mover-info-message
  • billing.text.format.remove-file-info-message
  • billing.text.format.door-request-info-message
  • billing.text.format.storage-info-message

A full explanation of the formatting is given in the /usr/share/dcache/defaults/billing.properties file. For syntax questions please consult StringTemplate v3 documentation or the cheat sheet.

On the web page generated by the httpd service (default port 2288), there is a link to Action Log. The table which appears there gives a summary overview extracted from the data contained in the billing log files.