X-Plane’s log file is our attempt to capture everything we could possibly want to know about your computer in case something goes wrong.  (There’s no personal information in there – we want to know things like what kind of CPU and graphics card do you have.) We do this because a fair amount of tech support comes from configuration problems; having the sim tell us the configuration saves tech support time in explaining how to gather configuration information and eliminates the risk of user error.

This matters because a fair number of bugs and tech support requests come from strange system configurations…often we don’t even know what was wrong until the user later reports fixing the problem by adjusting a piece of hardware that we didn’t know existed.  Here’s one example from last week:

Hi Guys, I just wanted to let you know, I got X-Plane working!  It turned out it was my sound card. I don’t actually have a sound card…I replaced my RealTek USB speakers with a small gnome that lives on top of my motherboard.  The gnome yodels what he thinks I should be hearing.

Well, it turned out that last week the gnome went on a wicked bender and passed out and shorted out my PCIe bus…I think that’s what was causing X-Plane to freeze.  I gave the gnome some charcoal pills and black coffee and the sim runs great!

BTW when is X-Plane 10 coming out?  Do you need beta testers? 🙂 🙂 🙂

Okay, I admit, I made that up.  But…that’s not far off from reality – just replace “gnome” with your favorite barely-compatible-with-DirectSound pro-level recording sound card.  Anyway, our response to this kind of thing is visible in the log…e.g.:

Sound Card: gnome (B.A.C. = 0.02%)

There is one down-side to the log: some users seem to like to report every single line of the log to us, with the question “is this a problem?”  We’ve been trying to make it more obvious what’s an error and what’s just information.  (Hint: most of it is information…except for the lines with the word ERROR in big bold letters.)

Therefore I make this suggestion to plugin developers re: the use of the log file.

  • Do identify all log output as coming from your plugin.
  • Do log serious errors that will be needed in crash forensics.
  • Do not log errors that are reported to the user.  If the user opens a file and it’s the wrong version, and your plugin presents a dialog box, you probably don’t need to also log the error.
  • Do log configuration information needed to triage a system.
  • Do not log routine status from normal operation – not in a release build please!

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

5 comments on “What’s the Log File For?”

  2. Oh thank god…black serif text on white, the way words are supposed to be read.

    Have mercy on the mature, Mr. S., and keep it this way?

  3. Can’t carrotroot and Daveduck agree on anything?

    Actually I’m right in the middle on colors. Also because I’m “mature” my eyes can no longer withstand having the typical bright white backgrounds ubiqutous across the web glaring into my eyes like a spotlight. But I also find white text on dark backgrounds difficult to read as well.

    A good middle ground is to have toned down backgrounds, but still display the text section of the page in a “lighter color” (not white) with darker text.

    Anyway, as long as you keep the blog going, I’ll keep reading it, regardless of the colors.

  4. You guys are all silly…if the colors bother you, grab the RSS feed and read it using a feed reader where you can control everything. This way, if you’re like Ben and you like a hideous interesting purple on black theme, you can have it. 🙂

  5. Chris, I’ve been RSS-ing this blog since the first day I found it. Only way to preserve my vision!

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