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Status and Reports > Serving Logs

Use the Status and Reports > Serving Logs page to view serving logs or disable logging. This page contains the following topics:

• About Serving Logs
• Disabling and Enabling Serving Logs
• Viewing Serving Logs
• Downloading Serving Logs

About Serving Logs

By default, the Google Search Appliance records detailed information in serving logs about how it serves results for every search query. Also, the search appliance can record the user identity for a secure query when the user is authenticated with a verified identity. To enable recording user identities in search logs and serving logs, click Record user identity in Search Logs and Serving Logs on the Serving > Access Control page.

Serving logs can help you understand how the search appliance interacts with users and serves results. Information from serving logs can assist you in setting up a new security configuration or debugging an existing configuration. For example, suppose that Ruth searches for secure results about "finances," but is not granted access to key documents. By using the serving log, you can view detailed information about the search appliance's internal control flow for this query, including receiving the query, attempting authentication, and denial of access. The information in the serving log might reveal a problem in your security configuration that prevents Ruth from getting important search results.

The search appliance maintains serving logs for 100 days. You cannot view serving logs for time periods more than 100 days in the past.

The number of search queries returned in a time range increases when you increase the range. The search appliance may return up to 100K queries for a given time range.  If you select a time range with a number of queries that exceeds this limit, then the search appliance may not return all of the results.

Serving Log Filters

You can view serving logs by selecting from the following filtering options:

• Query text--Enter a query string, such as "finances" or a substring, such as "finan." Regular expressions are not supported.
• Username--Enter a primary verified identity for the user, as provided by an authentication mechanism. You cannot search by using a secondary verified identity.
• Session ID--Enter a unique identifier for the session, as listed in the serving logs.
• Start time and End time--Select a time range for the queries by choosing values from the pull-down menus.

Start time and End time are required. All other values are optional.

Serving Log Contents

A list of queries that match the the intersection of the filter values appears on the page under Matching Queries. When you select a query, the Log for the selected query appear on the page. If there are no matches for the filter values, the list of queries is empty.

Log for the selected query provide the following information:

• Query--The query entered by the user
• Request ID--The unique ID for the search request
• Session ID--The unique ID for the session
• User ID--The primary verified identity for the user
• Show log levels--Click any of the following checkboxes to filter log messages by level of severity:
  • CRITICAL--Include messages that reflect issues where administrator action or contacting support may be required.
  • INFO--Include messages that reflect normal serving. Most messages fall into this category.
  • DEBUG--Include additional information with INFO-level log messages that can be used for debugging a configuration.
• Time--Time stamp for the log entry in the format MM/DD/YY hh:ss.sss (seconds.milliseconds)
• Component--The search appliance component that performed the corresponding action:
  • Search appliance front end
  • Search appliance back end
  • Authentication
  • Authorization
  • Security manager
• Log--Description of the action performed by the component

You can sort the serving log for the selected query by clicking the column headers for Component or Time.

Disabling and Enabling Serving Logs

By default, serving logs are disabled for your search appliance. When this feature is enabled, all queries are automatically logged.

You can enable and disable this feature as needed. To enable serving logs, click Enable Serving Logs. To disable serving logs, click Disable Serving Logs.

Viewing Serving Logs

To view serving logs:

1. Under View Logs, select filter options, as described in Serving Log Filters.
2. Click View Logs.
3. Under Matching Queries, select the query whose log you want to view.
   The log appears under Log for selected query.

Downloading Serving Logs

There might be situations, such as working with Enterprise Support, where you need to download serving logs. You can download serving logs in text format only.

To download logs for a selected query:

1. Click Download logs for this query.
2. Browse to a location for the file and click Save.