Applies to: IDENTIKEY Authentication Server

KB 160097– 23/06/2016 2016 VASCO Data Security. All rights reserved.

Page 1 of 4

KB 160097

Using Compressed Archived Logs in IDENTIKEY

Authentication Server (IAS).

Creation date: DD/MM/2016 Last Review: 23/06/2016 Revision number: 1

Summary

This article describes the use of the option “Compress archived logs” for IAS.

Authentication Server.

Problem symptoms / details.

Exactly what the “Compress Archived Logs” switch does in the Tracing options of the

General Setup in the IAS Configuration tool, is not well documented in the standard

manual set.

This article provides more detailed information.

Using compression can result in considerable space savings for customers concerned

about disk utilization.

Problem Solution.

The “Compress archived logs” switch is found in the IAS Configuration tool, on the

General Settings tab, in the Tracing options.

If Log Rotation is enabled, when the rotation criteria has been reached, IAS

automatically closes the existing trace file and opens a fresh one, renaming the

current trace to <trace-file-name>.N, where N is the next numeric value in sequence (1, 2, 3 …).

The configuration tool is shown in the following screenshot:

Document type: How To Security status: EXTERNAL

Applies to: IDENTIKEY Authentication Server

KB 160097– 23/06/2016 2016 VASCO Data Security. All rights reserved.

Page 2 of 4

For the following example, we will rotate the logs based on size, and set the size

relatively low so that rotation can be easily seen. In practice, rotation is commonly

done on a daily basis, maintaining an archive of 7 days. This is definable by the

system administrator and local standards.

Note that the Tracing options are set to include all tracing messages (Full Tracing).

The file is specified as “C:\Program Files\VASCO\IDENTIKEY Authentication Server

3.9\log\ias.trace” which will be rotated as ias.trace.1, ias.trace.2, etc.

With Log Rotation enabled, we set the size very small at 1 Mb and keep 7 archived

logs. Finally we enable Compress archived logs.

Applying the changes requires stopping and restarting IAS, which the Configuration tool will do automatically.

Turning our attention to the log directory, once the current trace file, ias.trace,

reaches the threshold of 1 Mb, it will be rotated out and compressed. As follows:

Applies to: IDENTIKEY Authentication Server

KB 160097– 23/06/2016 2016 VASCO Data Security. All rights reserved.

Page 3 of 4

The archive, with the added .gz extension, is in open-source GZIP format, generally

the latest release. Details on the format can be found at many locations on the

Internet, the following being two of the best:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gzip

• http://www.gzip.org/

To complete the testing, a number of operations were performed within IDENTIKEY

(importing a few .DPX files) which, again, pushed the current trace over the 1 Mb

limit. IDENTIKEY once again rotated and compressed the trace file:

Applies to: IDENTIKEY Authentication Server

KB 160097– 23/06/2016 2016 VASCO Data Security. All rights reserved.

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The archives can be explored with many available tools. For example, using the

widely-available 7-Zip tool:

Note that the contained trace file has a size of about 1.2 Mb, much larger that the

archive size of only 93 Kb.