System management section

Nexus OCSP Responder can work in an environment that includes a built-in system monitor – a supervisor. This article describes how to specify a Nexus OCSP Responder agent that sends signals to and receives signals from the supervisor. This is done in the "System management" section of the Nexus OCSP Responder configuration file.

Specify agent

• In the OCSP configuration file, specify the agent as follows:

  CODE

  agent.supervisor.host=<host>
  agent.supervisor.port=<port>
  agent.supervisor.connect=[true|false

  Description of constants and values:

Specify agent logging items

Locally, the agent listens to all log messages. You can separate different logging items into different output units.

• In the OCSP configuration file, specify a type for each logging item as follows:

  CODE

  agent.log.<#>.type=[file|stderr|syslog]

  Description of constants and values:

Constants and Values	Description
<#>	Replace <#> with the log sequence number.
file | stderr | syslog	Enter file to let all logging items be written to a file. You have to add certain specifications. See below. Enter stderr to let all logging items be written to stderr. If Nexus OCSP Responder is started in a terminal window, the logging items will be displayed in this window. If Nexus OCSP Responder is started as a Windows service anything written to stderr will be lost. Enter syslog to let all logging items be written to syslog. It is possible for Windows to log to syslog on a remote UNIX host. Remote syslog logging must be enabled on the syslog host.

• For each agent log with ...type=file, specify the following:

  CODE

  agent.log.<#>.prefix=<directory>/<filename>
  agent.log.<#>.period=<time expr>

  Description of constants and values:

Example:

agent.log.1.prefix=log/oper
agent.log.1.period=P1W

This creates a file: <installdir>/log/oper-YYMMDD-HHMMSS.log. A new file is created each week.

• For each agent log with ...type=syslog, specify the following:

  CODE

  agent.log.<#>.host=<host>
  agent.log.<#>.port=<port>
  agent.log.<#>.facility=<facility>

  Description of constants and values:

Apply filters to logging items

You can apply filters to the logging items to further fine tune the output.

1. To set up a filter for any log type, specify as follows in the OCSP configuration file:

   CODE

   agent.log.<#>.filter=<log msg properties>

   See this table for description of constants and values:

Examples

agent.log.1.filter=class=oper & severity>3

To filter all requests that are for non-issued certificates, create a filter like this:

agent.log.2.type=file
agent.log.2.prefix=log/ocsp-warnings
agent.log.2.filter=class=oper & severity=3

This will filter out all warnings generated for the oper class of messages. Then any log scraper with search capabilities will be able to parse the logs for the message NON-ISSUED CERTIFICATE DETECTED and alert accordingly.

The parsing can also be done on all log files without any filter.

Split audit logs into different log files

The Nexus OCSP responder supports three different audit logs, see Log messages and log filters. To filter out and split different audit logs into different log files, specify as follows in the OCSP configuration file:

agent.log.3.type=file
agent.log.3.prefix=log/audit-pkiStateAltered
agent.log.3.filter=class=audit.pkiStateAltered
agent.log.4.type=file
agent.log.4.prefix=log/audit-incoming-outgoing
agent.log.4.filter=class=audit.ocspQuery | class="audit".ocspResponse

If you only specify "audit" inside the class parameter, it will filter all audit log classes (that is, audit.pkiStateAltered, audit.ocspQuery, audit.ocspResponse).

Configure fields to be displayed in a logger agent

You can configure which fields that should be displayed in a logger agent. In the OCSP configuration file, specify as follows:

agent.log.<#>.format.fields={<field>} {<field>} ... {<field>}

See this table for description of constants and values:

You can also manipulate how a field will behave when used by the logger agent, for example, offset and length. To do this:

1. Specify integers on defined positions separated by a comma after a colon inside the curly brackets, such as {field:width,offset,length:novalue}, where:
   field - [string] the field name, for example, date
width - [integer] minimum width, default 1 or specified length
   offset - [integer] offset from start or offset from end if negative, default 0
   length - [integer] maximum length, default unlimited (0)
   novalue - [string] replacement string if no value exists for the provided field (default is ' - ')

2. To insert a line break after a field, use the keyword %s.

Example:

agent.log.1.format.fields={date} {class} {transactionId:5,,28:{thread}} {message} %s

Define default global configurations for all agent loggers

Set the loggerdef parameter to define default global configurations for all agent loggers configured in your system. This can be useful if you want to specify filters or a field format that should be applied globally across all agents. If a logger agent specify the same parameter but with an another setting, the global setting will be overridden for that agent.

Example:

;; Global settings
agent.log.loggerdef.encoding=ISO-8859-1
agent.log.loggerdef.format.date=[yyyy/MM/dd:HH:mm:ss.SSS]
agent.log.loggerdef.filedate=yyMMdd
agent.log.loggerdef.offset=T0H
agent.log.loggerdef.period=P1D
agent.log.loggerdef.format.fields={date} {class} {transactionid:5,,28} {message}
agent.log.loggerdef.filter=!class=audit

;; Ocsp log (no audit log)
agent.log.1.type=file
agent.log.1.prefix=log/ocsp

;; Audit log for crl/cil updates
agent.log.2.type=file
agent.log.2.prefix=log/audit
agent.log.2.filter.class=audit.pkiStateAltered

;; Audit log for query and responses
agent.log.3.type=file
agent.log.3.prefix=log/audit-incoming-outgoing
agent.log.3.filter=class=audit.ocspQuery | class="audit".ocspResponse
agent.log.3.format.fields={date} {class} {severity} {transactionid} {message} %s

Related information

• Configure Nexus OCSP Responder

• Log messages and log filters

• Nexus OCSP Responder

• ISO 8601 Representation of dates and times