Tuesday 16 August 2011

Axis2C logging and its documentation

I deployed Axis2C (1.6.0) on IIS (7.0) in order to host one web service. Axis2C is a Web Service engine with a logging feature - debug output can be redirected either to console or a text file. Log file is created in a directory with path constructed automatically by Axis engine at the web service startup. Axis installation directory path is kept in AXIS2C_HOME environment variable which must be added manually. During Axis2C deployment, additional information should be stored in a registry, at the path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Apache Axis2c\IIS ISAPI Redirector:
  • axis2c_home (string) - path to Axis2C installation directory (usually c:\axis2c)
  • log_file (string) - full path to log file log file name (read further this article for the explanation)
  • log_level (string) - trace, error, info, critical, user, debug, or warning
These registry entries can be added either manually or by running axis2_iis_regedit.js script which is included in Axis2C package.

I followed online documentation when deploying Axis and my service was running smoothly but I could not find log file. It was supposed to be in c:\axis2c\logs\axis2.log (log_file value I set) but directory was empty. Two things could be the root of the problem: engine either could not find path where to create a file or parent process didn't have enough rights to do so. Process Monitor is a good friend in these situations. I restarted World Wide Web Publishing Service and applied filter in Process Monitor to see only system events for w3wp.exe (IIS working process - one that loads Axis engine) only:

Process Monitor- Axis2C on IIS

Wow! Axis tried to create a log file at the very strange path: c:\axis2c\logs\c:\axis2c\logs\axis2.log. Axis engine was following this logic when creating path string:

log_file_path = $(AXIS2C_HOME) + "\logs\" + log_file

Documentation says:
"(add...) A String value with the name "log_file". The value is the absolute path of the log file.
Example: c:\axis2c\logs\axis2.log"


Even on the another page:
"Add a string value with the name log_file and a value of c:\axis2c\logs\axis2.log"

This seems to be wrong and correct version would be: log_file should contain log file name (e.g. axis2.log). When I applied this logic, log file appeared at the correct place!

I was curious about something else as well: what is axis2c_home registry value used for? As a test, I set it to some rubbish value: c:\axis2c123. I restarted IIS and this time set log_file to axis2.log.

To test whether Axis engine has been deployed successfully on IIS, you can use your browser: just type http://localhost/axis2/services and a page with a list of deployed services should appear. This didn't happen in my case, web page contained this message: An IIS server error occurred. An error occurred while initilizing Axis2/C. I checked log file (which was in expected directory: c:\axis2c\logs):

[error] ..\..\src\core\deployment\dep_engine.c(284) Repository path C:\axis2c123 does not exist
[error] ..\..\src\core\deployment\conf_init.c(56) Creating deployment engine failed for repository C:\axis2c123
[error] ..\..\src\core\deployment\dep_engine.c(284) Repository path C:\axis2c123 does not exist
[error] ..\..\src\core\deployment\conf_init.c(56) Creating deployment engine failed for repository C:\axis2c123

Seems that Axis engine used registry value axis2c_home (instead of environment variable AXIS2C_HOME as one would expect) to read installation directory required for proper initialization. I didn't dig further into this matter but only noticed that this confusion was a consequence of redundancy: installation directory was stored both in environment variable and registry - the same information was stored at two different places which is the practice that should be avoided.

I hope that next Axis2C release will be a bit more consistent in terms of configuration and with more accurate documentation.

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