Communications Process Log Files

Restriction: This topic applies only when the Enterprise Server feature is enabled.

Communications processes (MFCS) log messages to the communications process log file, log.html, in its System Directory.

If multiple communications processes are running, the date and time stamp at the beginning of each message is followed by an instance identifier in square brackets, for example, [2].

By default, there is only one log file which grows continuously until it is deleted by an administrator. However, you can use the mf-server.dat file to activate rotating log files, and to change the level of logging. The mf-server.dat file is located in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Micro Focus\Visual COBOL\bin and \bin64 (Windows) or $COBDIR/etc (UNIX) . It uses the ini-file format of section tags in square brackets followed by name=value pairs.

With rotating log files, MFCS uses multiple log files, named log-1.html, log-2.html, etc. When a log file reaches a configured size, MFCS moves on to the next file (which will be deleted first if it already exists). When it reaches the configured number of log files, it returns to log-1.html, overwriting it.

The syntax is as follows:

[logging]
 files=number-of-files
 filesize=maxsize
 dscontrol=none|standard|all
 dirsvc=none|unusual|processing|not-found|all

All the parameters are optional. However, to activate rotating log files, both files= and filesize= must be set, and files= must be set to a number greater than 1. These parameters configure rotating log files, as explained above. If both are set, then the total log file space required by MFCS will not exceed files*filesize (approximately). For example, to limit the log to three files of 100 KB each:

[logging] 
files=3 
filesize=100 

The parameters are explained below.