What's the difference between localhost.log, catalina.log, manager.log, host-manager.log ?

Question

I'm using Tomee. The logs folder contains files like this

1. localhost_access_log.2016-12-02.txt
2. localhost.2016-12-02.log
3. catalina.2016-12-02.log
4. host-manager.2016-12-02.log
5. manager.2016-12-02.log

I was looking for an explanation in the documentation but could find anything. It's my understanding that those localhost files log only the 'host computer' activity. It this right? What is the difference between these file? Do they record different types of messages?

Answer 1

you can find all detail in conf/logging.properties and conf/server.xml for the access log.

In short

• catalina is the container log file,
• localhost_access (only one defined in server.xml) the access log (= all requests like in httpd),
• localhost the log of the host and finally
• host-manager and manager the logs of the related web applications.

Here a commented example to try to help you read logging.propertues:

# log on the host "localhost"
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[Catalina].[localhost].xxx

# log on the host "localhost" for the webapp foo
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[Catalina].[localhost].[/foo].xxx

More generally the pattern is:

org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[${engine}].[${host}].[${context}]

Side note: ${context} is "/" for the root context.

This syntax applies for ServletContext logging

All is explained https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.5-doc/logging.html