How To Create A Debug Log

One of the most important pieces of information to help us answer your support case is the debug log that all variants of EditLive! can create. Sending through a complete debug log when you first log a support case can significantly speed up the resolution process and allow us to help you faster.

How Do I Create a Debug Log?

There are two parts to creating a debug log:

  1. Turn on debugging
  2. Restart EditLive, reproduce the problem and collect the debug information that was printed.

Turn On Debugging

The best way to turn on debugging is to modify the integration to call the setDebugLevel function. This approach will work reliably even if the problem prevents EditLive! from loading correctly. Different integrations have require slightly different steps to enable debugging:

JavaScript Add a call to the setDebugLevel function before you call show() e.g.
editlive.setDebugLevel("http");
ASP Set the DebugLevel property of the EditLiveForJavaGlobal object e.g.
eljglobal.DebugLevel = "http"
JSP Add the attribute debugLevel="http" to your eljglobal tag.
IBM WCM

Edit the file EditLiveJavaEditor.jsp and remove the // characters to uncomment the line below:
//eljInstance.setDebugLevel("http");

See the troubleshooting section in the documentation for more information.
Swing SDK

Before creating an instance of the ELJBean class, call:
com.ephox.editlive.util.LoggingUtils.enableDebugging();

This method is not present in early versions of EditLive! if the method is not available for you please add the code below instead:

 System.setProperty("org.apache.commons.logging.Log",
   "org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SimpleLog");
 System.setProperty(
   "org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.httpclient.wire",
   "debug");
 System.setProperty(
   "org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.org",
   "debug");
 System.setProperty(
   "org.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.log.com.ephox.editlive",
   "debug");
 System.err.println(System.getProperty("java.version"));
 System.err.println(System.getProperty("java.vm.vendor"));

Alternatively, if you can't modify the code on the server, you can enable debugging for a specific computer using the "Enable Debug Logging" menu item:

  1. Load EditLive! to edit any piece of content. If EditLive! is failing to load correctly, you can use one of our online demos to access the menu item - debugging will remain enabled even when you go back to using your own system.
  2. Ensure that there is a check mark next to the "Enable Debug Logging" item in the Ephox menu. If there isn't, select the menu item to check it.
    The Ephox menu is the icon in the far left of the menu bar.

Collecting the Debug Information

Once debugging is turned on, we need to reproduce the problem and collect the debug information that EditLive! outputs so it can be submitted with your support case. To do so:

  1. Shut down all instances of your browser. This gives us a clean slate to reproduce the problem from.
  2. Open your browser again and go through the steps to replicate the problem.
  3. The debug information is printed to different places depending on the system you're using:
    Windows Right click on the Java icon in your system tray and select "Show Console"
    Mac OS X Open the "Console" application, located in the Applications -> Utilities folder.
    Linux
    Solaris    		 Select "Sun Java Console" from the Tools or View menu within FireFox.
    Swing SDK If you're using the Swing SDK for either EditLive! or EditLive! for XML, the debugging information will be written to System.err.
  4. Copy the entire content and paste it into a new text document of Word document, then reply to the case creation e-mail you will receive after opening a support ticket and attach the file you created.

What If the Browser Crashes?

If the browser crashes or becomes unresponsive, you may not be able to access the Java console. Fortunately, you can tell Java to also log the console information to disk. Note that this is not required on OS X as the log remains available through the Console application even if the browser crashes.

  1. Open the Java control panel. On Windows this can be found by opening “Control Panel” under the Start menu, then double clicking “Java”.
  2. Switch to the “Advanced” tab.
  3. Expand “Debugging” and ensure that both “Enable tracing” and “Enable logging” are checked.
    Screen shot showing the Enable tracing and Enable logging options are checked.
  4. Follow the process from Collecting the Debug Information to generate the log.
  5. You will find a series of files which contain the console output in the directory specified below. Please send all of these files to Ephox.
    Windows XP C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Sun\Java\Deployment\log
    Windows Vista C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\log
    Mac OS X The content remains accessible through the Console application even if the browser crashes.
    Linux
    Solaris    		 ~/.java/

Why Do We Need a Debug Log?

EditLive's debug logs provide a lot of really important information that we use to reproduce any errors you report and pinpoint the cause of them. This information includes everything from the exact version of EditLive! you're using, the version of your browser and operating system, the configuration file you're using and messages that highlight any unusual or outright erroneous situations that might cause problems.

If you're asking a question about configuration or how to do something rather than reporting a possible bug, the debug log is still really useful to let us get a good picture of your situation. The more we know about the way you're using EditLive! the better we can answer your question.

The most common cause of delay in support cases is not having enough information to correctly diagnose and replicate the problem. The more information you can provide when you submit your support case, the faster we'll be able to solve the problem.