3 ms·

I remember once haranguing a group of Java developers to use the log4j's RollingFileAppender. No matter what arguments I used and despite many nods and promises

by harryf 11y ago

I remember once haranguing a group of Java developers to use the log4j's RollingFileAppender. No matter what arguments I used and despite many nods and promises, on live systems they just kept on using the default FileAppender like there's no tomorrow, despite it being a relatively trivial config change to switch to the RollingFileAppender. Only the sysadmins "got it" because they were the ones that got to feel the pain of cleaning up a NAS filled up by log files.

glenjamin 11y ago
Out of interest, why wouldn't you configure logrotate on the machine itself, rather than making this an application concern? Presumably logrotate was already set up for the variety of other logs on the system?
- icebraining 11y ago
  I was curious too, though it seems log4j just keeps writing to the old log (it doesn't re-open the file on SIGHUP), and copytruncate is not completely safe from data loss.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
einrealist 11y ago
Did they own the systems their applications were deployed to? Because that is the essence of full stack development. Otherwise, config management is required as boundary context between developers and operations.
mhaymo 11y ago
To my mind the whole point of DevOps is to make the developers "get it" by making them feel the pain when they get things wrong. Developers make decisions about the system every day, so it pays for them to understand how it is maintained and operated.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  My impression is that devops instead has turned into a means for getting sysadmins out of the way so developers can use the latest shiny in production...
HelloNurse 11y ago
This only proves your Java developers were stupid and arrogant; using RollingFileAppender or something even smarter would be the norm in any sufficiently functional organization, regardless of whether developers anticipate the need or sysadmins need to ask.

by harryf 11y ago

glenjamin 11y ago

Out of interest, why wouldn't you configure logrotate on the machine itself, rather than making this an application concern? Presumably logrotate was already set up for the variety of other logs on the system?

icebraining 11y ago
I was curious too, though it seems log4j just keeps writing to the old log (it doesn't re-open the file on SIGHUP), and copytruncate is not completely safe from data loss.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

einrealist 11y ago

Did they own the systems their applications were deployed to? Because that is the essence of full stack development. Otherwise, config management is required as boundary context between developers and operations.

mhaymo 11y ago

To my mind the whole point of DevOps is to make the developers "get it" by making them feel the pain when they get things wrong. Developers make decisions about the system every day, so it pays for them to understand how it is maintained and operated.

digi_owl 11y ago
My impression is that devops instead has turned into a means for getting sysadmins out of the way so developers can use the latest shiny in production...

HelloNurse 11y ago

This only proves your Java developers were stupid and arrogant; using RollingFileAppender or something even smarter would be the norm in any sufficiently functional organization, regardless of whether developers anticipate the need or sysadmins need to ask.