Asterisk: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition

Chapter 21. System Monitoring and Logging

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

The Buddha

Asterisk comes with several subsystems that allow you to obtain detailed information about the workings of your system. Whether for troubleshooting or for tracking usage for billing or staffing purposes, Asterisk’s various monitoring modules can help you keep tabs on the inner workings of your system.

logger.conf

When troubleshooting issues in your Asterisk system, you will find it very helpful to refer to some sort of historical record of what was going on in the system at the time the reported issue occurred. The parameters for the storing of this information are defined in /etc/asterisk/logger.conf.

Ideally, you might want the system to store a record of each and every thing it does. However, there is a cost to doing this. On a busy system, with full debug logging enabled, a large amount of data will be generated. Although storage is far cheaper today than it was when Asterisk was young, it may still be necessary to achieve a balance between detail and storage requirements.

The /etc/asterisk/logger.conf file allows you to define all sorts of different levels of logging, to multiple files if desired. This flexibility is excellent, but it can also be confusing.

The format of an entry in the logger.conf file is as follows:

filename => type[,type[,type[,...]]]

We have already been working with the logger.conf file, so you will already have entries in it similar to the ...