Enabling access logging

When enabled, the access logging feature logs either all incoming requests to the Transaction server or only the requests resulting in access violations. Examples of access violations are authentication failure or insufficient authority to execute a command. When enabled, access logging allows an HCL Commerce administrator to quickly identify security threats to the HCL Commerce system.

When an authentication failure or authorization failure event occurs, the following information is logged to the access log file database tables, ACCLOGMAIN and ACCLOGSUB:

Host name of the client
ID of the thread running the command
User ID of the client
Time the event occurred
Command that was run
Store for which the command was run
Resource on which the operation was performed
Result of the access control check

Procedure

Open the configuration file.

Search for AccessLoggingEventListener. Set the value of the enable attribute to true.


<component
      compClassName="com.ibm.commerce.event.accesslogging.AccessLoggingEventListener"
      enable="true" name="AccessLoggingEventListener">
      <property display="false">
        <start enabled="false"/>
      </property>
    </component>

Find the LogSystem > activityLog > accessLogging element.
```
<accessLogging cacheSize="aa" logAllRequests="bbbbb" />
```
Where:

aa

An integer value specifying the maximum number of entries that will be logged to memory before entries are written to the database. Generally a higher number will result in improved performance with respect to access logging. The default value is 32.

bbbbb

A value of true or false. A value of true means that all incoming requests are logged. A value of false means that only access violations are logged. To prevent excessive or unnecessary logging, a value of false is recommended. Use true only when you suspect authentication problems or security contravention at your site. The default value is false.
In the following example, the access logging keeps 3 entries in memory before logging entries to the database tables. In addition, it logs all incoming requests to the HCL Commerce Server:
```
<accessLogging cacheSize="3" logAllRequests="true" />
```
Save and close the file.