[tor-bugs] #20128 [Metrics/CollecTor]: Make CollecTor operators aware of logging

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#20128: Make CollecTor operators aware of logging
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 Reporter:  iwakeh             |          Owner:
     Type:  enhancement        |         Status:  needs_information
 Priority:  Medium             |      Milestone:  CollecTor 1.1.0
Component:  Metrics/CollecTor  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal             |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                     |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                     |         Points:
 Reviewer:                     |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by iwakeh):

 Thanks for the detailed reply!

 Some of my answers summarize what we discussed in the team meting or are
 derived from that discussion.

 Replying to [comment:3 karsten]:
 > Some thoughts:
 >
 >  - Leaving a version of this appender in the default logback.xml and
 commenting it out sounds good to me.

 It can be added to the example logback.xml, commented.

 >  - Did this setup work with your email provider without issues, or do we
 need to pay attention to things like having to authenticate to the SMTP
 server or having to log in via POP3/IMAP before being able to send
 messages via SMTP?  I guess I could try out myself, but maybe this is
 something you already found out.

 There are many tweaks for the mailing itself; authentication, imap/pop3,
 etc. is possible, but needs configuration; partially beyond logback even,
 e.g. the user running the application needs to be able to mail. So, these
 questions are out of scope and should be answered by operation.  Stating
 that mailing log ERRORs is possible in logback and providing pointers to
 external docs must suffice.

 >  - Are there non-HTML layouts available for the text email folks?  Or
 are they all ugly?

 Text should be available. I didn't look into it yet, as I don't expect a
 huge volume.

 >  - Does this really send 1 email per ERROR line?  Depending on how we're
 using them, this could produce a lot of emails.  We might have to go
 through the code first and make sure that we're rate-limiting them
 internally.

 That's a good point, for example removing the config file will trigger an
 ERROR mail on each attempted read, which is unnecessary. See log-levels
 ticket #20144.

 >  - You say this appender doesn't send any emails on WARN or lower?  In
 that case we should probably go through the code and make sure that all
 relevant situations that require immediate attention of the operator are
 on ERROR and not on WARN or even lower.

 This should also be part of the log-levels ticket #20144.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/20128#comment:4>
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