Tips from the Team
By engineers, for engineers
At Papertrail we are software engineers who are passionate about programming, debugging, logging and pretty much everything about building and running applications. We enjoy keeping our coding skills sharp and playing with new technologies. Below are some of things we have picked up along the way.
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Tips from the Team
Heroku: Most Common Errors Explained
Guide to Debugging Ruby on Rails Applications
How to Configure Remote Syslog
Centralized Logging for Docker – Configuration and Troubleshooting
New to Microservices: What You Should Know When You Set Up Logging
Syslog Event Management for Easy Cron Job Troubleshooting
Tips for Aggregating and Analyzing PowerShell Logs
How to Aggregate Logs From Apps in Local Kubernetes Clusters
Best Practices for Centralized Logging in Microservices Architecture
How to Tail, Search, and Filter Linux Logs
Heroku: Most Common Errors Explained
The allure of quickly spinning up an app on a platform as a service (PaaS), as opposed to cobbling together a solution on an infrastructure as a service (IaaS), makes Heroku an appealing option for many developers. With the explosive growth in the platform as a service market, new features and capabilities are continually rolling out. Along with the fast-paced evolution of Heroku comes an increase in complexity, which can create challenges for application developers.
Guide to Debugging Ruby on Rails Applications
There are many methods to help you avoid bugs in your application. You can use linters, write tests, or use an IDE, which will help you spot bugs early in the coding phase. However, no matter how good you are at preventing bugs, they will always happen. And it may not have anything to do with you. You could get hit by a bug in the third-party library you use. Therefore, as important as bug prevention is, it’s also crucial to know the debugging process well.
How to Configure Remote Syslog
Syslog is a standard for collecting, routing, and storing log messages. It emerged from the Sendmail project in the 1980s. In 2001, it was standardized as RFC 3164 and then as RFC 5424 in 2009. It’s supported on several different platforms, including Unix/Linux, BSD Unix, macOS, and network devices like printers and routers. Because of the remote syslog capability, the standard has lasted several decades.
Centralized Logging for Docker – Configuration and Troubleshooting
Container logging adds some complexities we don’t experience when using VMs or dedicated hardware. With containers, once the container dies, the logs and data for the container also die. This may not be a problem for small applications with little logging. But for more complex applications or applications running in production, you need to start thinking about log persistence and management.
New to Microservices: What You Should Know When You Set Up Logging
Let’s paint a picture. You’re a developer working on a system broken down into multiple services. These services do their one thing well and all communicate. However, it’s 3 a.m., and you get a call from your boss telling you something’s wrong. People can’t complete the tasks they’re supposed to complete, and there are errors on the webpages they’re using. You’re the first responder and need to figure out what’s going on.
Syslog Event Management for Easy Cron Job Troubleshooting
A good application usually has some sort of logging to provide clues when something goes wrong. When it doesn’t, I have to spend time making sure I can get some basic information logged when an issue occurs. In those cases, I used to write files in /var/log for every application or scheduled task. But I came to a point where there were too many files to review when I had to troubleshoot. To simplify troubleshooting, I decided to change my approach to an easier and more convenient system. This post describes what I came up with.
Tips for Aggregating and Analyzing PowerShell Logs
As you automate tasks with PowerShell, those tasks start to become more complex. As a result, logs become larger. Take a look at this huge log that was output from executing commands in PowerShell:
How to Aggregate Logs From Apps in Local Kubernetes Clusters
Local Kubernetes clusters are great for both developers and system engineers. When developing applications, programmers can use local clusters to make sure their application can be easily and correctly deployed without the need for configuring real infrastructure. System engineers can use them for testing, creating proofs of concept (POCs), or learning and trying new tools.
Best Practices for Centralized Logging in Microservices Architecture
Microservice architectures bring significant benefits to software teams. Microservices allow a team to scale individual parts of their application independently. They provide huge benefits in resilience, too. An application with a memory leak in a troublesome spot is a big problem for a monolithic architecture. One bug takes down the whole system and leads to extended outages. With a microservice architecture, a memory leak only takes down one part of the swarm. But there are downsides to the microservice approach. For starters, microservices complicate deployment plans. While you can solve some of those complications with orchestration tools, it’s another layer of technology in your stack.
How to Tail, Search, and Filter Linux Logs
Regardless of what language you code in or what type of apps you’re working on, you’re going to end up reading log files. They’re your window into what’s happening inside your code or the server you’re talking to. Linux log management is one of the skills setting an experienced developer apart from the rest.