Centovacast Losing Log Files

Read 5505 times
I put in a ticket with Centovacast and they at first said the log files are rotated and they are still maintained. 

Then they said:

Even if the logs are gone, which is normal, after they have been rotated, they should have been processed by Centova Cast and should have been transformed into statistics.

The problem here, which I've just noticed, is that more access log files should be present; they should be in the same number as error logs. So I'm going to contact our developers about this.

My issue is the historical data is somehow deleted and not retained.  You can see that here in the clients log file area:

http://prntscr.com/d5d1i0

Next they said they would turn the ticket over to the developers to see what is happening.  My problem is every time they escalate a ticket to the developers, it takes from a few days to months and months to get a response.

I'm going to lose a few customers if this is not resolved.

Has anyone else noticed this issue ?  This station doesn't play music, it is a talk station, so the log entries are far less than a station changing songs every 3 to 4 minutes.
The historical data is not preserved in log files. The logs are processed every 12 hours and the data, which is used to generated statistics, is stored in the database. At that point the log file does not serve any other purpose and can be safely deleted.

Centova Cast does keep a number of archived log files, in case it's ever needed to check the accuracy of statistics  or whatnot, and that number of archived logs is usually 4.

Please note that I never said I was escalating the ticket to our developers, but only that I would inquire why you only have two access logs. Now I have the answer so I'm getting back to you:
Shoutcast v2 did not always allow applications such as Centova Cast to tell it how many logs to save and apparently it only saves one archived log. We're going to revisit this and see if the DNAS changed how this works.


But the bottom line remains that you're really not missing out on anything, as the access log files that get deleted are 24 hours old and the entries they store are already in the database.
Quote from: AlexiuB'
But the bottom line remains that you're really not missing out on anything, as the access log files that get deleted are 24 hours old and the entries they store are already in the database.
That may be true but the customer needs the W3C logs so he can do reporting for ASCAP / SoCan / BMI, etc.

If the log files do not keep historical information, how does he get his reporting information ?
The info needed is the IP address of the listener, the time and date, time listened, and player used.  This info is  needed for at least TWO WEEKS previous, not 12 to 24 hours that your current ACCESS.LOG / ACCESS_.LOG gives.
Broadcast reports for the previous month are created on the 1st of each month and can be found under Statistics -> Reports -> Downloads for each station.

Many of our clients use these reports for licensing/royalty reporting, so there should be no need to use the raw access logs for this purpose.
Most broadcasters are looking for impressions of each song..... I am not.  I need  the IP address of the listener, the time and date, time listened, and player used.   Do you have a sample of the "monthly report"?  The report I see under there is a CSV that does not help me at all, unless the monthly report is different.  I would much prefer the "raw" log if possible since your software is trying to force everything into a one size fits all.


Last Edit: November 14, 2016, 06:55:29 pm by shannongraves
We're just trying to make things easy, not force anything.

This is the first time someone asked us for more logs instead of the monthly reports, which were specifically designed to serve for royalty reporting. And as I mentioned, I already brought this up to our developers and we're looking into ways of keeping more access log files.

Later edit: it seems that I forgot to add the link with an example report. So here it is:
http://ab.centova.com/report_2013-04.zip
Last Edit: November 18, 2016, 11:32:10 am by AlexiuB