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The System Logfile

Your copy of Phantasmal has a logfile. Yes, that's right, yours -- there's no getting around it. None! So what are you going to do about it?

If I were you, I'd learn about it. This tutorial can help. First you'll need to find it. Check out "/log/System.log" first, that's the default location. If it's not there you'll just have to check the "/include/config" file for something that looks like a logfile. Have a look in your logfile. If you've been ignoring it up until now, it's probably got a lot of random stuff in it. Mmm... Stuff. You may even remember specific errors you've gotten and see them there.

You may want to go ahead and remove the old logfile or back it up, just so you don't have to scroll past all the old stuff. So do that now if you're gonna. Then, at the MUD command line and with an administrator character, type something like "%log YOUR AD HERE, ONLY $99.99!". Now have a look in the logfile again.

Those spamming bastards! They're everywhere! Even in your logfile. No, I'm being silly. That is (of course) the message you just typed, in the logfile, with a little header above it. The header tells you who typed it, what file the message came from and various things like that.

It's kind of inconvenient to have to look at the logfile in the terminal window and type the MUD commands from the MUD window, isn't it? You can view the logfile more easily by subscribing to the Logfile channel. You're an administrator, you can do that. Go ahead and type "channels", which will show you your available channels. Note that both the Logfile and Error channels are available. I highly recommend subscribing to one or the other, but not both. Any error will also make it into the logfile and you probably don't want to see it twice (three times in some cases).

Go ahead and subscribe to the logfile with a command like "channels Logfile on". The try some test-logging... Type "%log d00dz! 37337 \/\/AR3Z 5173 @ 127.0.0.1!". Bastards! Now they even spam your terminal with their filth! You should bring down their vile warez site with a denial-of-service attack!

But seriously, now you can tell that you're seeing what gets written to the logfile as it gets written. Go you! You can subscribe to only certain notification levels if you prefer. There's a special syntax for subscribing to channels that only administrators get -- check the usage information. To subscribe to errors only, for instance, you can type "channels logfile on err". You may need to unsubscribe and resubscribe to do this, though.

The error channel doesn't currently respect the level setting. All errors are considered equal severity, so if you subscribe to the error channel you see all of them. Still, it can be very useful. Note: errors that are caught with a catch{} construct in the code don't show up on the error channel or in the logfile. Caught errors are considered routine so you don't want them cluttering up your log.

There's one more nifty command to play with -- %log_subscribe. It lets you choose what goes into the logfile and what doesn't. Every log message has a severity like "verbose", "normal", "warning", "error" and "fatal". There are equivalent numbers for the various severities. With %log_subscribe you can choose, for each file, what severity of error gets written to the logfile. This may not affect what winds up on the Logfile channel, though. The syntax for %log_subscribe is: "%log_subscribe <file> <level>". If you want the settings to persist across shutdowns, it's currently better to change the "/data/system/logd_channels.unq" file, which has the same functionality.