Configuring the Halo CE log file
The Server Log
The server now logs many important events, including chatting, CTF flag captures, kills, joins, and quits. Use the sv_log_* commands to control where the log is written, and how often the log is rotated. Log rotation is important to keep the server running fast. If the log file size exceeds the rotation threshold, the old log is renamed and a new log is started. This way the server never gets bogged down by log files that are too large, and log data is not lost. The server operator can also choose to have the chatting echoed to the server console using sv_log_echo_chat. This way the server operator can monitor all the chatting while looking at the the server console.

The log format is easy to understand and should be easy to parse. This should facilitate the creation of stats programs to track how players are doing on your server. Additionally, the log is useful to have a record of what happened in a competition match.

To enable the Server log function add the following commands to the init.txt before the sv_mapcycle_begin command:


sv_log_file "{logfilename}"
This is the prefix name of your log file. All log files will end with a ".log" extension. When log rotation is used the log date and time will be appended to the prefix. Example: sv_log_file "HaloCElog" will create a log file named HaloCElog.log and when the file is rotated "HaloCElog 2004-09-17 (19_07_38).log"

Log files are written to the same directory the game variants are stored: In a default configuration c:\My Documents\My Games\HaloCE\Savegames (note: see Relocating Custom Game Types for changing the log's location)

sv_log_enabled 1
This command tells the Halo CE Server to enable the log 1=Enabled 0=disabled

sv_log_echo_chat 1
This command tells the Halo CE server to record all chat messages to the logs

sv_log_rotation_threshold {numeric}
This command tells the Halo CE server to rotate the log when it reaches the specified size in Kbytes. Example setting this to 900 would tell the server to rotate the log when the file size reached 900K bytes.