Logging happens over D-Bus as log signals and is most commonly used to provide information which may be presented for a user at some point. It is up to the front-end implementation to decide which log events to present to the user at all, as well as when and how.
Logging to file may also be done in a separate logging process, or can be activated in each of the various OpenVPN 3 D-Bus services running. Each D-Bus service will regardless of file logging also send the Log signal over the message bus.
Log signals are by default sent to the net.openvpn.v3.log service,
provided by openvpn3-service-logger. This service is normally
automatically started, as each process wanting to log requests this service
to attach (subscribe) to their log events early in the start-up process.
When doing this, only this log service will see the log messages being sent
over the message bus.
Services can also use signal broadcasts instead. When this approach is
used (often by using the --signal-broadcast argument to the service), all
log signals is broadcast and the only part restricting the visibility of
these log signals is the D-Bus policy
(/etc/dbus-1/system.d/net.openvpn.v3.conf). This run mode is not
recommended for normal production setups; this is more useful when
debugging. The D-Bus policy needs to be updated for this approach to work,
as the default is to restrict who is allowed to receive signals from
the OpenVPN 3 Linux D-Bus services.
For more information about the log service, see the
net.openvpn.v3.log documentation.
Each log message are put into separate groups, depending on which
OpenVPN 3 D-Bus service is issuing the Log signal. The complete list
of of groups and categories can be found in
src/log/log-helpers.hpp.
The log group mapping is defined in the LogGroup enum class
| Identifier | ID | Description |
|---|---|---|
| UNDEFINED | 0 | Invalid value, should not occur |
| MASTERPROC | 1 | Not in use, can be recycled |
| CONFIGMGR | 2 | Log messages sent by the configuration manager (openvpn3-service-configmgr) |
| SESSIONMGR | 3 | Log messages sent by the session manager (openvpn3-service-sessionmgr) |
| BACKENDSTART | 4 | Log messages sent by the backend process starter (openvpn3-service-backendstart) |
| LOGGER | 5 | Log messages sent by the openvpn3-service-logger process or similar logging services. |
| BACKENDPROC | 6 | Log messages sent by the openvpn3-service-client processes |
| CLIENT | 7 | Log messages coming from the OpenVPN 3 Core library's client implementation. These are sent by the openvpn3-service-client process, but tagged separately to differentiate better what is VPN connection related and what is client process related. |
The log category mapping is defined in the LogCategory enum class.
| Identifier | ID | Description |
|---|---|---|
| DEBUG | 0 | Mostly messages useful for debugging and during development, carries quite implementation specific information |
| VERB2 | 1 | More verbose messages |
| VERB1 | 2 | Verbose messages |
| INFO | 3 | Nice to know, informational messages |
| WARNING | 4 | Warnings which should normally be fixed but should not impact the general operational state |
| ERROR | 5 | Issues which may impact the operational state |
| CRITICAL | 6 | Critical issues which will have an impact on the operational state |
| FATAL | 7 | Fatal errors which makes the process stop |
Each log signal carries the information described in the section above, but each signal also contains a reference to the interface and object path of the sender.
The Log signals provides these variables:
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| group | uint | Which log group this signal belongs to |
| level | uint | Which log verbosity level this message carries |
| [session_token] | string | Only available in signals from openvpn3-service-client. Contains a unique reference to an active session |
| message | string | The log message itself |