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  1. Hadoop Common
  2. HADOOP-211

logging improvements for Hadoop

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Details

    • Improvement
    • Status: Closed
    • Minor
    • Resolution: Fixed
    • 0.2.0
    • 0.3.0
    • None
    • None

    Description

      Here's a proposal for some impovements to the way Hadoop does logging. It advocates 3
      broad changes to the way logging is currently done, these being:

      • The use of a uniform logging format by all Hadoop subsystems
      • The use of Apache commons logging as a facade above an underlying logging framework
      • The use of Log4J as the underlying logging framework instead of java.util.logging

      This is largely polishing work, but it seems like it would make log analysis and debugging
      easier in the short term. In the long term, it would future proof logging to the extent of
      allowing the logging framework used to change while requiring minimal code change. The
      propos changes are motivated by the following requirements which we think Hadoops
      logging should meet:

      • Hadoops logs should be amenable to analysis by tools like grep, sed, awk etc.
      • Log entries should be clearly annotated with a timestamp and a logging level
      • Log entries should be traceable to the subsystem from which they originated
      • The logging implementation should allow log entries to be annotated with source code
        location information like classname, methodname, file and line number, without requiring
        code changes
      • It should be possible to change the logging implementation used without having to change
        thousands of lines of code
      • The mapping of loggers to destinations (files, directories, servers etc.) should be
        specified and modifiable via configuration

      Uniform logging format:

      All Hadoop logs should have the following structure.

      <Header>\n
      <LogEntry>\n [<Exception>\n]
      .
      .
      .

      where the header line specifies the format of each log entry. The header line has the format:
      '# <Fieldname> <Fieldname>...\n'.

      The default format of each log entry is: '# Timestamp Level LoggerName Message', where:

      • Timestamp is a date and time in the format MM/DD/YYYY:HH:MM:SS
      • Level is the logging level (FATAL, WARN, DEBUG, TRACE, etc.)
      • LoggerName is the short name of the logging subsystem from which the message originated e.g.
        fs.FSNamesystem, dfs.Datanode etc.
      • Message is the log message produced

      Why Apache commons logging and Log4J?

      Apache commons logging is a facade meant to be used as a wrapper around an underlying logging
      implementation. Bridges from Apache commons logging to popular logging implementations
      (Java logging, Log4J, Avalon etc.) are implemented and available as part of the commons logging
      distribution. Implementing a bridge to an unsupported implementation is fairly striaghtforward
      and involves the implementation of subclasses of the commons logging LogFactory and Logger
      classes. Using Apache commons logging and making all logging calls through it enables us to
      move to a different logging implementation by simply changing configuration in the best case.
      Even otherwise, it incurs minimal code churn overhead.

      Log4J offers a few benefits over java.util.logging that make it a more desirable choice for the
      logging back end.

      • Configuration Flexibility: The mapping of loggers to destinations (files, sockets etc.)
        can be completely specified in configuration. It is possible to do this with Java logging as
        well, however, configuration is a lot more restrictive. For instance, with Java logging all
        log files must have names derived from the same pattern. For the namenode, log files could
        be named with the pattern "%h/namenode%u.log" which would put log files in the user.home
        directory with names like namenode0.log etc. With Log4J it would be possible to configure
        the namenode to emit log files with different names, say heartbeats.log, namespace.log,
        clients.log etc. Configuration variables in Log4J can also have the values of system
        properties embedded in them.
      • Takes wrappers into account: Log4J takes into account the possibility that an application
        may be invoking it via a wrapper, such as Apache commons logging. This is important because
        logging event objects must be able to infer the context of the logging call such as classname,
        methodname etc. Inferring context is a relatively expensive operation that involves creating
        an exception and examining the stack trace to find the frame just before the first frame
        of the logging framework. It is therefore done lazily only when this information actually
        needs to be logged. Log4J can be instructed to look for the frame corresponding to the wrapper
        class, Java logging cannot. In the case of Java logging this means that a) the bridge from
        Apache commons logging is responsible for inferring the calling context and setting it in the
        logging event and b) this inference has to be done on every logging call regardless of whether
        or not it is needed.
      • More handy features: Log4J has some handy features that Java logging doesn't. A couple
        of examples of these:
        a) Date based rolling of log files
        b) Format control through configuration. Log4J has a PatternLayout class that can be
        configured to generate logs with a user specified pattern. The logging format described
        above can be described as "%d {MM/dd/yyyy:HH:mm:SS}

        %c

        {2}

        %p %m". The format specifiers
        indicate that each log line should have the date and time followed by the logger name followed
        by the logging level or priority followed by the application generated message.

      Attachments

        1. acl-log4j.patch
          114 kB
          Arun Murthy
        2. acl-log4j-II.patch.tgz
          21 kB
          Arun Murthy
        3. acl-log4j-webapps.patch
          1.0 kB
          Arun Murthy
        4. commons_logging_patch
          167 kB
          Barry Kaplan
        5. patch.txt
          15 kB
          Sanjay Dahiya

        Activity

          People

            sameerp Sameer Paranjpye
            sameerp Sameer Paranjpye
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            Dates

              Created:
              Updated:
              Resolved: