HomeDoor Users' Guide

Appendix 2 - Log file format

This appendix documents the format of HomeDoor's log file.

The HomeDoor log file is named HomeDoor.log and is stored in the Preferences folder within the sytem folder. The log file is stored in text format, and can be read by any word processor. The file consists of one line for each log entry. Each entry consists of a number of fields, with each field delimited by a tab.

The first two fields in every HomeDoor log entry are always the date and time of the entry. The date is always in mm/dd/yy format, with two digits each for the month, day and year. The time is always in 24 hour format hh:mm:ss, with two digits each for the hour, minute and second.

HomeDoor log entries can be either status entries or access entries. In a status entry, the date and time fields are followed by a status information field. The status information field simply describes a significant event such as HomeDoor's loading or starting up or an error of some sort. Status entries should be self-explanatory. An example status entry is shown below:

04/08/96 09:57:46 A new HomeDoor configuration has been loaded.

Access entries are in a format which is meant to be compatible with programs which read and process WebSTAR log files. Specifically, the date and time are followed, in order, by status, IP address and URL fields.

Status - the status in HomeDoor access entries is always OK. This field is included for compatibility with WebSTAR log processing programs, and for future use.
IP address - the IP address of the requesting machine.
URL - the full URL, beginning with http://, to which the requestor was redirected. This will include the URL entered in HomeDoor plus any additional path information included with the initial request. For instance, in the example in Appendix 1, a request to http://www.companyX.com/file would result in the entry below:

04/08/96 09:58:00 OK 198.68.10.4 http://www2.companyX.com/companyX/file

In general, if logging is enabled, there will be one log file entry for each access made through HomeDoor. Accesses made to pages not served by HomeDoor (such as those through relative URLs) will not be logged. Under certain rare conditions involving retransmissions, there may be more than one log file entry for a particular access. Multiple consecutive log entries from the same IP address and for the same URL may indicate a network reliability problem.

Complete logging on a site-by-site basis is available through the LogDoor multi-site log processor.

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