Feature Proposal: Enhance Configure Logging

Motivation

Tasks.Item10616 points out that the logs of extension installation are not saved. These are valuable to preserve especially if issues are encountered with an extension.

A simple extension install log could be added without a feature proposal, however it would also be good to expand the current configure.log to record other configure events.

Description and Documentation

From Tasks.Item10616

• Write a summary record to working/logs/configure.log
  • File format doesn't support logging an install. Needs some discussion. Format is tabular, for example:

Timestamp	Userid	IP Address	Config variable	New Value
Fri Mar 25 23:02:58 2011		127.0.0.1	{Plugins}{TopicDataHelperPlugin}{Module}	Foswiki::Plugins::TopicDataHelperPlugin

• Write the detailed report to working/logs/configure/NameOfPackage-[action]-yyyymmdd-hhmmss.log

To make the log format more useful, add an Action column, Set, Install, Remove, Passwd, Set being the current format of Variable / Value? Proposed revised layout:

Timestamp	Userid	IP Address	Action	Item Changed	New Value
Fri Mar 25 23:02:58 2011		127.0.0.1	SET	{Plugins}{TopicDataHelperPlugin}{Module}	Foswiki::Plugins::TopicDataHelperPlugin
Fri Mar 25 23:03:18 2011		127.0.0.1	INSTALL	NameOfExtension?	failure/success message
Mon Apr 11 01:55:08 2011		127.0.0.1	SAVE	Authentication	AUTHENTICATION FAILURE
Mon Apr 11 01:55:08 2011		127.0.0.1	EXTEND	Authentication	AUTHENTICATION FAILURE

Also noticed that password change operations are not logged.

Examples

Impact

The addition of an Action column to the configuration log would impact anyone externally reporting on the file. I don't believe that Foswiki currently makes any use of the file other than to write to it.

Implementation

-- Contributors: GeorgeClark - 11 Apr 2011

Discussion

Partially implemented. The logging of extension install/remove actions into the working/logs directory has been completed. Addition of "event" logs has not been implemented yet.

-- GeorgeClark - 30 Jul 2011