Paketo BuildPacks Java JSON Log for Spring Boot Application

Question

We are using Paketo BuildPacks for our Spring Boot application. We configured all logs to be JSON written to STDOUT. The issue is that there's a few lines of logs by Paketo during startup:

Setting Active Processor Count to 2
Calculated JVM Memory Configuration: -XX:MaxDirectMemorySize=10M -Xmx1643814K -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=146137K -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=240M -Xss1M (Total Memory: 2G, Thread Count: 50, Loaded Class Count: 23387, Headroom: 0%)
Enabling Java Native Memory Tracking
Adding 124 container CA certificates to JVM truststore
Spring Cloud Bindings Enabled
Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Djava.security.properties=/layers/paketo-buildpacks_bellsoft-liberica/java-security-properties/java-security.properties -XX:+ExitOnOutOfMemoryError -XX:ActiveProcessorCount=2 -XX:MaxDirectMemorySize=10M -Xmx1643814K -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=146137K -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=240M -Xss1M -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions -XX:NativeMemoryTracking=summary -XX:+PrintNMTStatistics -Dorg.springframework.cloud.bindings.boot.enable=true

Is there any way to configure Paketo to print the above as JSON:

{ timestamp: 1234567890, "app": "my-service", "message": "Setting Active Processor Count to 2" }

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 18 '22 at 03:11

It is not possible to directly configure Paketo BuildPacks to print log messages in JSON format. Paketo BuildPacks are designed to be used with Cloud Foundry, which uses a specific logging format that is based on log lines written to STDOUT. This format is not compatible with JSON, and there is no built-in support for converting log messages to JSON within Paketo BuildPacks.

One potential solution to this problem would be to use a log aggregation and analysis tool that is capable of parsing and analyzing log messages written in the Cloud Foundry format. There are many different tools available that can do this, including Elastic Stack (formerly known as the ELK stack), Splunk, and Logz.io. These tools can parse and analyze log messages written in the Cloud Foundry format, and they can provide you with powerful analytics and visualization features to help you understand and optimize your application's performance.

Another potential solution would be to use a log forwarding tool to send your log messages to a log analysis tool or service that is capable of parsing and analyzing JSON logs. There are many different log forwarding tools available, including Logstash, Fluentd, and rsyslog. These tools can collect log messages from your application and send them to a destination of your choice, such as a log analysis tool or a centralized log management service.

Thanks for the information. Yes, you're right. We already have fluent-bit configured to aggregate logs in our cluster but all of our application logs are in JSON format and customizing the fluent-bit configuration just for a few non-JSON lines is a bit suboptimal. I'd rather turn them off if it's not possible to make them JSON. — Rad, Dec 18 '22 at 07:58

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 18 '22 at 03:09

No, sorry. The logging format in Paketo Buildpacks, and the helpers (technical name is exec.d processes) that get installed, are not configurable at this time.

There is some work that has been done in libcnb which is the upstream library that the Java-related buildpacks use that would allow customized loggers. In theory, it should be possible to allow changing to a JSON-based logging format. That would require the v2.0 of the library which has yet to be released.

I suggest adding this as a suggestion for the 2023 Roadmap. There's presently a discussion going on where the project is soliciting new features. You can also open an issue under the Java buildpack for tracking.

Thanks for the answer and the links. I created the issue and added it to the roadmap. Let's see. One quick question, is there anyway to turn them off? — Rad, Dec 18 '22 at 07:58

Paketo BuildPacks Java JSON Log for Spring Boot Application

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