Server Tuning Guide – Hard Disk Space and File Management

Over time or when a considerable number of connections are being managed by StayLinked, there are several files that can be generated that may need to be occasionally cleaned up. Enabling extended logging or usage tracking features can exacerbate the file usage requirements of the StayLinked Server. There are also log files that can record many redundant entries that can be suppressed if the file size grows cumbersome during operation.

Session-Specific Logging – Server operation may be affected if the number of Server files grows in size or quantity. The files in the \Logs subdirectory may need to be occasionally purged, eliminating unnecessary files from the system. Setting the StayLinked Server settings to a logging level of Session, Handler or Socket is only recommended during troubleshooting efforts. Leaving these logs running can affect disk performance and file access times, growing worse with additional server load. Using the keyboard mapping for ‘logs snapshots’ will also create additional file copies that are never automatically cleaned up by the system.

Usage Tracking – These features can be configured to export tracking information to hard files. These files are stored in the logs directory and are also unmanaged. Over time, these files can grow in size and quantity based on the configuration selections made in the StayLinked Administrator’s Usage Tracking section. These files must be managed manually to ensure that your desired data is not lost.

StayLinkedStdErr.log – The StayLinkedStandardErr.log file is enabled by default on all Servers. This file can be disabled in the StayLinked Administrator under the Server Settings section. Disabling the StdErr and StdOut files may result in lost logging events. If your Server is recording application entries that frequently repeat, you can disable specific entries by creating an excludefromlogs.txt file and placing it in the StayLinked directory on the Server. This file should contain any portion of the string that repeats in the log file, allowing the Server to skip logging events that contain the string contents entered in the excludefromlogs.txt file. Common entries include:

• Malformed VT sequence
• psListener took an Exception

New server installations of version 15.1 and newer come pre-loaded with an excludefromlogs text file with these messages automatically suppressed. Additions can be made to this existing file in cases where additional items should be excluded from these log files.

IBMi Shared File Systems – Sharing a file system (switchable IASP) across multiple partitions that each run StayLinked could cause issues if multiple StayLinked processes are writing to the same file set. A non-switchable file set would not be subject to this issue, since each StayLinked instance would have an independent copy of each required file. Likewise, if you do not run multiple StayLinked instances that access the same shared file system, the files would be exclusive to that StayLinked instance.