Foreground Execution

by John Samuel Anderson — last modified Jan 15, 2009 09:30 PM

Using "instance fg" for more error details.

Check the log files

When Zope runs as an operating system service, it runs silently. Services use log files to record significant events. However, not all events are recorded in the log. I tried checking both log files, but found nothing mentioned about this "Odd-length string" thing.

$ cd /var/Plone/var/logs
$ tail instance1.log -n 40
$ tail instance1-Z2.log -n 40

Advanced Developers: You may have picked up on the fact that the script accesses Zope directly, not via HTTP. Therefore, it's not really interacting with the operating system service, and would not be tracked in these system logs.

Honest Mistake #1: I did not notice the zeoserver.log file.

So, what now?

Run Zope in the Foreground

When you can't see what's going on via the logs, you can run Zope in the foreground, so you can watch it react to events. You'll have to stop the service, then restart it in foreground mode:

$ service plone stop
$ /var/Plone/instance fg

Zope will start up, issue a lot of "Deprecation Warnings", and then end with this:

2009-01-12 11:35:35 INFO Zope Ready to handle requests

From this point on, you can watch Zope's reaction to HTTP requests.