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PMTA knowledge base›API endpoint§ 5.11

List of logs and accounting files

/logs
A list of files, not their contents

Lists the log and accounting files available on the node — what the monitor’s “Logs” page shows with download links.

The call is GET /logs?format=json (or xml).

There are no file contents here — only the list. /getFile serves the file itself by a name from this list.

Logs can be closed separately: the monitor level in http-access with the deny-logs qualifier keeps the monitor and closes the logs.

Access is decided by http-access based on the address the request came from. The key from http-api-key in the X-API-Key header grants full access from any address.

The main trap is expecting the log itself here. The endpoint answers with a list of names, and parsing designed for log lines gets a list of files. The lines come with a second request — /getFile.
What the Hub does. It does not ask: accounting reaches the Hub as a stream through the webhook, and it does not fetch engine logs over the network.
Recommended values

What to ask this endpoint:

Question This one or not
which logs and accounting files are on the node yes
what the log says no — /getFile
what happened to messages yesterday no — that is accounting
The page’s purpose, downloading a file by name and the deny-logs qualifier come from the manual (§ 5.11, § 3.3.1.58.3). The split of questions is ours.
Example configuration
# the file list, then one file by name
curl -s 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/logs?format=json'curl -s 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/getFile?file=log.txt' -o log.txt
The name for the second request is taken from the list: /getFile serves a file by name, it does not search for it.
yellow — — directive names, blue — blocks. They are highlighted the same way in the text of the card.
Compatibility
PowerMTA 6.0
described in the manual of this version · platform: any
The vendor does not state the first version for every directive — there is no note here. The name also appears in the 5.0 edition of the manual.
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Related entries

2 relations

Works together with

Return a node fileA neighboring catalog entry. § 5.11

Can be replaced by

LogsThe screen that shows the same thing to a human. § 5.11

How to check on the node
Check whether the logs are open to the requesting address:
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/logs?format=json'
grep -n 'http-access' /etc/pmta/config
Code 403 while the monitor is open — check whether the requesting address has the deny-logs qualifier.
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What else to read

3 articles

◇What the node tells about itself and through which channelsSeven observation surfaces: the web monitor, the console in four formats, the log, accounting, accounting search, metrics and export to external analytics.◇The watchdog that restarts the engineKeeps an eye on the engine and brings it back up after a crash by itself, sending a crash report to the postmaster address.◇What makes a virtual machine riskyRunning on a virtual machine is possible, but the manual does not recommend it without sufficient hardware and properly tuned hypervisor settings: under load the node may stop responding.

In the Hub
Cost of a mistake
safe: a wrong value breaks nothing
Scenarios
Untangle a stuck queue