Ok, but the second tweet is a bit redundant
Like what else would a .log file be? A video file? A Word Document? An executable?
Do you really need to inspect the properties to be told: “This .log file is certainly containing text. Thank you for installing Windows 10. Save 5% on your Office 365 subscription with code ‘ILOVEMICROSOFT’”
Like what else would a .log file be? A video file? A Word Document? An executable?
I think their point is that a 200gb text file is a wild size usage for a crash log, and there’s probably accidentally some binary data in that log. There’s no way a crash log can exceed 2x the size of the game binary itself.
You should have rolling log files of limited size and limited quantity. The issue isn’t that it’s a text file, it’s that they’re not following pretty standard logging procedures to prevent this kind of thing and make logs more useful.
Essentially, when your log file reaches a configured size, it should create a new one and start writing into that, deleting the oldest if there are more log files than your configured limit.
This prevents runaway logging like this, and also lets you store more logging info than you can easily open and go through in one document. If you want to store 20 gb of logs, having all of that in one file will make it difficult to go through. 10 2 gb log files is much easier. That’s not so much a consumer issue, but that’s the jist of it.
As a sysadmin there are few things that give me more problems than unbounded growth and timezones.
Fully agree, but the way it’s worded makes it seem like log being a text file is the issue. Maybe I’m just misinterpreting intent though.
200GB of a text log file IS weird. It’s one thing if you had a core dump or other huge info dump, which, granted, shouldn’t be generated on their own, but at least they have a reason for being big. 200GB of plain text logs is just silly
Essentially, when your log file reaches a configured size, it should create a new one and start writing into that,
deletingarchiving the oldest
FTFY
Sure! Best practices vary to your application. I’m a dev, so I’m used to configuring stuff for local env use. In prod, archiving is definitely nice so you can track back even through heavy logging. Though, tbh, if you’re applications getting used by that many people a db logging system is probably just straight better
I thought they were just trying to hammer home how wild it was for the file to get that big, since it’s just a text file.
if you assume the second post has ulterior meaning it could be that someone might not know what a crash log is, but most people who have interacted with computers at least once would be at least vaguely familiar window’s file description and understand that text file icon + >200 gb size is not normal
this is, of course, a rather big assumption.
most people don’t put that much though in a post and expecting them to will make your online experience a confusing mess.
It could be a binary file, though that would probably make it smaller if anything.
I’m guessing the point was the developer didn’t invent some proprietary log that also contained a dump and other things that could conceivably be very large. That would also be terrible design, but managing to create hundreds of gigs of text in a game crash log is a special kind of terrible.
