Logging Socket Handler

In  logging

Overview

Centralized logging is becoming a more common infrastructure decision and is often on a remote server. Adding a socket-handler resource to the logging subsystem will allow log messages to be sent to a remote server.

Issue Metadata

Issue

Dev Contacts

QE Contacts

Affected Projects or Components

  • WildFly Core

  • WildFly

Other Interested Projects

Requirements

Hard Requirements

  • Messages should be able to be sent over the following protocols:

    • TCP

    • SSL/TLS TCP

    • UDP

  • The logging subsystem will not manage the connected sockets. It will be required to use an outbound-socket-binding for the creation of sockets.

  • The org.jboss.logmanager.handlers.SocketHandler will be wrapped in a org.jboss.logmanager.handlers.DelayedHandler. This is done as the socket binding will not be available at boot when the logging.properties is used.

    • It will need to be noted/documented that using a DelayedHandler queues messages, then once activated replays the messages. If TRACE or DEBUG messages are enabled this could make the queue rather large and eventually hit a OOME. Once the logging subsystem is initialized, this behavior goes away. However for --admin-only containers testing will need to be done to ensure the queue does not endlessly grow.

  • Not all attributes common to other handlers will be required. For example the formatter attribute will not be available on the resource making the named-formatter a required attribute for this resource.

Nice-to-Have Requirements

Non-Requirements

  • Messages will not be guaranteed to be sent. There could be cases where a network connection is closed or an error occurs transporting the error.

  • Servers launched in admin-only will not log messages over a socket. Runtime services are required for this handler to work. It’s not currently possible for it to work in admin-only. Messages will just be discarded.

Implementation Plan

The logging subsystem will need to introduce a service to allow the org.wildfly.network.outbound-socket-binding and org.wildfly.management.socket-binding-manager capabilities to be used. The org.wildfly.network.outbound-socket-binding capability is on-demand which makes a service required.

This also means the org.wildfly.logging.handler capability will require a service type of java.util.logging.Handler. However it will not be a requirement for all capability points have a service. As a result the service type will not be documented in the capability reference.

Test Plan

Currently the log manager has test for the socket handler. Similar tests will be added to WildFly Core tests. A simple echo style server will need to be used.

Community Documentation

PR https://github.com/wildfly/wildfly/pull/11406