Log Statistics Agent

The Log Statistics agent periodically reads the “volttron.log” file based on the configured interval, computes the size delta from the previous hour and publishes the difference in bytes with a timestamp. It also publishes standard deviation of the size delta every 24 hours. This agent can be useful for detecting unexpected changes to the system which may be an indication of some sort of failure or breach.

Configuration

The Log Statistics agent has 4 required configuration values:

file_path: This should be the path to the “volttron.log” file
analysis_interval_secs: The interval in seconds between publishing the size delta statistic to the message bus
publish_topic: Can be used to specify a topic to publish log statistics to which does not get captured by the historian framework (topics not prefixed by any of: “datalogger”, “record”, “analysis”, “devices”)
historian_topic: Can be used to specify a topic to publish log statistics to which gets captured by the historian framework (“datalogger”, “record”, “analysis”, “devices”)

The following is an example configuration file:

{
    "file_path" : "~/volttron/volttron.log",
    "analysis_interval_min" : 60,
    "publish_topic" : "platform/log_statistics",
    "historian_topic" : "record/log_statistics"
}

Periodic Publish

The Log Statistics agent will run statistics publishes automatically based on the configured intervals.

The following is an example of a periodic size delta publish:

Peer: pubsub
Sender: platform.logstatisticsagent1
Bus:
Topic: platform/log_statistics
Headers: {'min_compatible_version': '3.0', 'max_compatible_version': ''}
Message: {'log_size_delta': 902, 'timestamp': '2021-01-25T22:48:16.924135Z'}