Introduction to Logs770 Netscape Certificate Management System Installation and Setup Guide • October 2001Log File Naming ConventionsAll log files created by Certificate Management System use one or the other of twonaming conventions. There is one naming convention for active log files and onefor rotated log files.Active Log File Naming ConventionAll active log files created by Certificate Management System use an identicalnaming convention. The name of an active log file is in the form .log,where specifies the log file type—whether it is system, error, or audit.For example, an active error log file would be named error.log.Rotated Log File Naming ConventionAll rotated log files created by Certificate Management System use an identicalnaming convention. When Certificate Management System rotates an active logfile, it renames the current log file and then creates a new log file with the originalname. The rotated log file is saved with the original file type and an appendedtimestamp.The name of a rotated log file is in the form .timestamp, where thecomponents of the filename indicate the following:• specifies the log file type—system, error, or audit—that has beenrotated.• timestamp is a large integer that indicates the date and time the correspondingactive log file was rotated. The date and time have the forms YYYYMMDD(Year, Month, Day) and HHmmSS (Hour, Minute, Second), in that order.For example, an error log file rotated on July 28, 1998 at 12:36:24 would be namederror.19980728123624. Note that the timestamp is expressed in standard Unixtime: the number of seconds since midnight January 1, 1970.Buffered Versus Unbuffered LoggingCertificate Management System supports buffered logging for all three types oflogs—system, error, and audit. You can choose to configure the server for eitherbuffered or unbuffered logging (see “Configuring CMS Logs” on page 773).
