[SNMP4J] SnmpRequest.java not logging errors

[Mark Gorokhov]

If the error in the agent is not abnormal it should be processed.
If the error triggers printStackTrace() the error cannot 
be processed. In this case printing it to console makes no sense
because console on a server is not visible and never monitored
in production environment. This problem will never become known 
because it is never exposed.

I think that the same approach should be taken for logging error 
conditions. Consider that log is never checked in production. 
This might be because of bad practice, or because the production 
server cannot be accessed, or because of the size of the log. 
Who could read millions of log lines on regular bases and decide 
where is a real problem? 

My preference is to notify about any abnormal condition some
registered listeneres. These listeners in the main application
should decide how to process the event or ignore it.

I think that any 3rd party library should not use printStackTrace().
Also silent error conditions logging should be discouraged.
Use notifications (event+listener) to the caller or throwing
XxxxRuntimeException is preferred.

Mark G

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Fock [mailto:fock at agentpp.com] 
Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2008 2:10 AM
To: Mark Gorokhov
Cc: Wilson Burgos; snmp4j at agentpp.org
Subject: Re: [SNMP4J] SnmpRequest.java not logging errors

Hi,

There is IMHO no abnormal program event
that is "logged" to console and not forwarded
to the logging adapter. The event below is
a *normal* program event, since returning
a SNMP error status is a normal task of a
SNMP agent.

So, printing the stacktrace here in debug
mode is for debugging only, or do you
want to log each SNMP error returned
by the agent in production?

Best regards,
Frank

Mark Gorokhov schrieb:
> I support this request to remove all printStackTrace() from 
> SNMP4J code and use only RuntimeExceptions. Other option is to
> add error event listeners and let them decide what to do 
> with the problem.
>
> Mark G.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: snmp4j-bounces at agentpp.org [mailto:snmp4j-bounces at agentpp.org]
On
> Behalf Of Wilson Burgos
> Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 1:16 PM
> To: snmp4j at agentpp.org
> Subject: [SNMP4J] SnmpRequest.java not logging errors
>
> Hello,
> 	I'm using SNMP4j and I can't seem to log SNMP errors when debug
> is enabled. I found out the SnmpRequest.java is dumping them to the
> console only. Is this the intended behavior not log error messages?
>
> public void requestStatusChanged(RequestStatusEvent event) {
>       int newStatus = event.getStatus().getErrorStatus();
>       setErrorStatus(newStatus);
>       if (logger.isDebugEnabled() &&
>           (newStatus != SnmpConstants.SNMP_ERROR_SUCCESS)) {
>         new Exception("Error '"+                      
>  
> PDU.toErrorStatusText(event.getStatus().getErrorStatus())+
>                       "' generated at: "+vb).printStackTrace();
>       }
> }
>
> Thanks,
> Wil
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