Logging in the library and the daemon

Libvirt includes logging facilities starting from version 0.6.0, this complements the error handling mechanism and APIs to allow tracing through the execution of the library as well as in the libvirtd daemon.

• Logging in the library
• Configuring logging in the library
• Logging in the daemon
• Syntax for filters and output values
• Examples

Logging in the library

The logging functionalities in libvirt are based on 3 key concepts, similar to the one present in other generic logging facilities like log4j:

• log messages: they are information generated at runtime by the libvirt code. Each message includes a priority level (DEBUG = 1, INFO = 2, WARNING = 3, ERROR = 4), a category, function name and line number, indicating where it originated from, and finally a formatted message. In addition the library adds a timestamp at the beginning of the message
• log filters: a set of patterns and priorities to accept or reject a log message. If the message category matches a filter, the message priority is compared to the filter priority, if lower the message is discarded, if higher the message is output. If no filter matches, then a general priority level is applied to all remaining messages. This allows, for example, capturing all debug messages for the QEmu driver, but otherwise only allowing errors to show up from other parts.
• log outputs: once a message has gone through filtering a set of output defines where to send the message, they can also filter based on the priority, for example it may be useful to output all messages to a debugging file but only allow errors to be logged through syslog.

Note that the logging module saves all logs to a debug buffer filled in a round-robin fashion as to keep a full log of the recent logs including all debug. The debug buffer can be resized or deactivated in the daemon using the log_buffer_size variable, default is 64 kB. This can be used when debugging the library (see the virLogBuffer variable content).

Configuring logging in the library

The library configuration of logging is through 3 environment variables allowing to control the logging behaviour:

• LIBVIRT_DEBUG: it can take the four following values:
  • 1 or "debug": asking the library to log every message emitted, though the filters can be used to avoid filling up the output
  • 2 or "info": log all non-debugging informations
  • 3 or "warn": log warnings and errors, that's the default value
  • 4 or "error": log only error messages
• LIBVIRT_LOG_FILTERS: defines logging filters
• LIBVIRT_LOG_OUTPUTS: defines logging outputs

Note that, for example, setting LIBVIRT_DEBUG= is the same as unset. If you specify an invalid value, it will be ignored with a warning. If you have an error in a filter or output string, some of the settings may be applied up to the point at which libvirt encountered the error.

Logging in the daemon

Similarly the daemon logging behaviour can be tuned using 3 config variables, stored in the configuration file:

• log_level: accepts the following values:
  • 4: only errors
  • 3: warnings and errors
  • 2: informations, warnings and errors
  • 1: debug and everything
• log_filters: defines logging filters
• log_outputs: defines logging outputs

When starting the libvirt daemon, any logging environment variable settings will override settings in the config file. Command line options take precedence over all. If no outputs are defined for libvirtd, it defaults to logging to /var/log/libvirt/libvirtd.log (before 0.9.0 it was using syslog) when it is running as a daemon, or to stderr when it is running in the foreground.

Libvirtd does not reload its logging configuration when issued a SIGHUP. If you want to reload the configuration, you must do a service libvirtd restart or manually stop and restart the daemon yourself.

Starting from 0.9.0, the daemon can save all the content of the debug buffer to the defined error channels (or /var/log/libvirt/libvirtd.log by default) in case of crash, this can also be activated explicitly for debugging purposes by sending the daemon a USR2 signal:

killall -USR2 libvirtd

Syntax for filters and output values

The syntax for filters and outputs is the same for both types of variables.

The format for a filter is one of:

  x:name  (log message only)
  x:+name (log message + stack trace)

where name is a match string e.g. remote or qemu and the x is the minimal level where matching messages should be logged:

• 1: DEBUG
• 2: INFO
• 3: WARNING
• 4: ERROR

Multiple filters can be defined in a single string, they just need to be separated by spaces, e.g: "3:remote 4:event" to only get warning or errors from the remote layer and only errors from the event layer.

If you specify a log priority in a filter that is below the default log priority level, messages that match that filter will still be logged, while others will not. In order to see those messages, you must also have an output defined that includes the priority level of your filter.

The format for an output can be one of those 3 forms:

• x:stderr output goes to stderr
• x:syslog:name use syslog for the output and use the given name as the ident
• x:file:file_path output to a file, with the given filepath

In all cases the x prefix is the minimal level, acting as a filter:

• 1: DEBUG
• 2: INFO
• 3: WARNING
• 4: ERROR

Multiple output can be defined, they just need to be separated by spaces, e.g.: "3:syslog:libvirtd 1:file:/tmp/libvirt.log" will log all warnings and errors to syslog under the libvirtd ident but also log all debug and information included in the file /tmp/libvirt.log

Examples

For example setting up the following:

export LIBVIRT_DEBUG=1
export LIBVIRT_LOG_OUTPUTS="1:file:virsh.log"

and then running virsh will accumulate the logs in the virsh.log file in a way similar to:

14:29:04.771: debug : virInitialize:278 : register drivers
14:29:04.771: debug : virRegisterDriver:618 : registering Test as driver 0

the messages are timestamped, there is also the level recorded, if debug the name of the function is also printed and then the formatted message. This should be sufficient to at least get a precise idea of what is happening and where things are going wrong, allowing to then put the correct breakpoints when running under a debugger.

To activate full debug of the libvirt entry points, utility functions and the QEmu/KVM driver, set:

log_filters="1:libvirt 1:util 1:qemu"
log_outputs="1:file:/var/log/libvirt/libvirtd.log"

in libvirtd.conf and restart the daemon will allow to gather a copious amount of debugging traces for the operations done in those areas.

On the other hand to deactivate the logbuffer in the daemon for stable high load servers, set

log_buffer_size=0

in the libvirtd.conf.