Logs

PlainShelf writes one log file per day and keeps them under the log directory its configuration names. The desktop app writes to <user config dir>/PlainShelf/logs; a server writes to the dir under log_file in its config file.

Reading a log

Open Settings → Logs in the sidebar's admin section to pick a log by name and date.

The page shows the end of the file, not all of it. A log file grows for as long as the day lasts, and every HTTP request adds a line, so a busy day can leave a file far larger than a browser can render at once. When the page is showing only part of a file it says so above the content, and Load more reaches further back.

Reporting a problem

Every response the server sends carries a request number in the X-Request-Id header, and every error it answers with repeats that number in the response body as incident. It is eight characters long and deliberately avoids the characters people mix up when reading a number aloud — no 0, O, 1, I or L appears in one.

Include that number in a bug report. Searching a log file for it finds the line for that request, and for a failure the server did not expect that line also carries the route, the shelf, and the underlying error the response itself withholds. Background work — a batch move, emptying the trash, fingerprinting — is logged under the number of the request that started it, so one number covers the whole operation.

When something fails, the number is on screen: a small Error reference notice appears in the corner of the window with a Copy button, so a report can quote it without opening developer tools. A failure the interface raised on its own — a bug in a page, or a pCloud shelf read, where there is no server to ask — is given a number of the same shape with a c- prefix. Nothing in a server log matches one of those, and the prefix is there to say so.

Numbers are also only useful while the log that holds them still exists, so report a problem before the retention window below expires, or copy the log file aside.

Retention

Rotated log files are deleted once they are older than the retention window. Nothing else deletes them, so without a window a log directory grows for as long as the application is installed.

The default window is 30 days. Change it in Settings → Logs:

• A number of days: files older than that are deleted.
• 0: no log file is ever deleted.

Deletion happens when the log rotates — the first time the application writes a log line on a new day — so an application that is not running deletes nothing, and one that has been idle for a while cleans up when it next writes. A change saved from the settings page applies to the next rotation; there is no need to restart.

Only files the log page itself lists can be deleted: a file is a log file when it sits directly in the log directory and its name is the configured prefix, a YYYY-MM-DD date and .log. Anything else in that directory — including subdirectories and symbolic links — is left alone.

A server can seed the window from its config file:

app_conf:
  logger:
    log_file:
      type: filename_rotate
      dir: ./logs
      prefix: root
      retention_days: 30   # 0 keeps every file

A value saved from the settings page takes precedence over the config file. Deleting the saved value reverts to the config file, and then to the built-in default of 30 days. The desktop app has no config file, so the settings page is the only place its window is set.