Platforms

All Classic and Classic HPO.  Not available in LISTSERV Lite.


Abstract

Enable/disable a system-wide changelog that logs information about DISTRIBUTE/mail-merge jobs and postings to lists.


Example

z/VM:

SYSTEM_CHANGELOG = 'SINGLE' 

Unix:

SYSTEM_CHANGELOG="YEARLY"

export SYSTEM_CHANGELOG

Windows:

SYSTEM_CHANGELOG=WEEKLY

Details

System changelogs are not available in LISTSERV Lite.

LISTSERV Classic or Classic HPO includes this feature. If enabled, a file called system.changelog (SYSTEM CHANGELG on z/VM) is created and written to in LISTSERV's A directory (or on the A disk for z/VM) containing data for each DISTRIBUTE, mail-merge, and list posting sent through the server. The syntax of the data line is documented in chapter 10 of the site manager's manual.

Originally, the SYSTEM_CHANGELOG value was a Boolean "on/off" setting (set to 0 to disable or 1 to enable) and the behavior of SYSTEM_CHANGELOG=1 was the same as the modern setting "SINGLE". The Boolean settings still work, but are deprecated.

Under non-z/VM ports of LISTSERV, the system changelog can also be rotated on a WEEKLY, MONTHLY, YEARLY, or SINGLE basis, or explicitly turned off (the default) by setting the value to 0 as before. For backward compatibility the value 1 is the same as the value SINGLE.

Changelog rotation is NOT supported under z/VM due to the filesystem restriction of 8-character file extensions; while the command processor will not complain if you set SYSTEM_CHANGELOG = 'MONTHLY', the behavior will always be as if you had specified 1 or 'SINGLE'.

Rotated system change-logs are renamed with the format SYSTEM.CHANGELOG-yyyy[mm[dd|w]] (depending on the rotation period selected)

Important:  If changelog rotation is enabled, be aware that the data in the rotated changelogs WILL NOT be available to the web-based activity reports.  Only the current SYSTEM.CHANGELOG file is used for those reports.  Thus, if you have (for instance) "SYSTEM_CHANGELOG=YEARLY", only the data for the current year will be available to the web interface.  This means, of course, that as of the end of the rotation period, your data for the previous period will seem mysteriously to have vanished.

The data is not gone, however.  It is simply in a renamed file (or files, depending on how many rotation periods have passed) that is inaccessible to the reporting interface.  The rotated files may be retrieved from LISTSERV and parsed manually, if necessary, or can even be concatenated back together into SYSTEM.CHANGELOG if desired.  (In the latter case, just be sure to concatenate them in the correct date order, and for unix, be sure the file is named in lower case.)

The original design concept of changelog rotation was intended to prevent changelogs from filling up tiny disks or disk partitions that were the norm twenty and more years ago when LISTSERV's changelogs were introduced.  Given the ever-declining cost of disk space, L-Soft recommends not rotating changelogs unless there is no question that they are consuming more disk space than they are worth, particularly if it is important that the data remain available for future reporting.


Editorial Note:  For many years, the documentation for this keyword said there was a "Daily" option for system change log rotation.  That option does not and never did exist.  We have removed that option from the documentation, and apologize for any confusion.


Default Value

0 (that is, disabled)