As part of diagnosing a support issue our support team may ask you to send them various log files. This page explains how to obtain the right files at the right time.
Under its default settings VPOP3 logs a minimal amount of information about what it is doing to various files in the main VPOP3 directory. When investigating a support issue it is often the case that we will need you to switch on logging to extra files or increase the level of detail being written to the main log. This can generate a lot of data; up to several MB per second. In order to prevent disks getting filled up with logged data VPOP3 limits the maximum size of these log files. By default this size is set to 1MB but can be increased in Settings → Diagnostics. Once the files reach their maximum size they are renamed with a .lbk extension (.old in versions prior to 2.4.7) and a new .log file is started.
The log files will be found in the directory specified under Settings → Diagnostics → General → Log Path. By default, generally speaking in older versions of vPOP3 you'll find the log files in the main VPOP3 directory. In newer versions you may find the log files in the _log subdirectory within the main VPOP3 directory. The exact rules for deciding where the log files are stored depends on your upgrade history and what settings changes you have made.
The main log files of interest have the following as the first part of their filename (before the .log or .lbk extension):
| Filename | What we call it | Contains |
|---|---|---|
| vpop3 | Main VPOP log | The main VPOP3 log file |
| errors | Error log | A subset of the vpop3 log file which only contains errors |
| security | Security log | Information relating to failed logins and the like |
| smtpclt | SMTP client log | Session commands and data when VPOP3 is sending to another SMTP server (e.g. ISP) |
| smtpsvr | SMTP server log | Session commands and data when VPOP3 is receiving outbound mail from a mail client (e.g. Outlook) |
| pop3clt | POP3 client log | Session commands and data when VPOP3 is retrieving mail from a POP3 server (e.g. ISP mailbox) |
| pop3svr | POP3 server log | Session commands and data when VPOP3 is sending inbound mail to a POP3 mail client (e.g. Outlook mailbox) |
| imap4svr | IMAP server log | Session commands and data when VPOP3 is sending inbound mail to an IMAP4 mail client (e.g. Outlook mailbox) |
When we need to see log files we'll let you know exactly which files we need.
Most of the time it's easy enough to catch the right data in the log files but on a busy server there can be so much data being written to the logs that you need to be pretty quick to grab the data from the logs before they are overwritten. Here's the general approach that works well in all cases:
smtpclt, imap4svr etc.) you've been asked for on the Settings → Diagnostics → Sessions page.Settings → Diagnostics → Sessions page.Settings → Diagnostics → General → Log Level to Full Logging if you've been asked for a VPOP3 log on full logging.Settings → Diagnostics → General → Maximum log size page.