ActivePush/docs/LOGS.md

Logging, retention and database maintenance

ActivePush is designed so that nothing grows without bounds. This page lists every place where data accumulates and how it is limited.

Server log

• Written to stdout/stderr, collected by journald under the systemd unit. ActivePush does not write log files itself, so there is nothing to rotate with logrotate.

• Level: RUST_LOG in /etc/active-push/environment (default active_push=info,warn). ACTIVE_PUSH_LOG_JSON=true switches to JSON lines (ELK, Loki, Vector).

• Size is controlled by journald. Recommended drop-in:

  # /etc/systemd/journald.conf.d/size.conf
  [Journal]
  SystemMaxUse=500M
  SystemKeepFree=1G
  MaxRetentionSec=30day
  

  then systemctl restart systemd-journald. Read the log with journalctl -u active-push -f.

• Volume at info is roughly one line per notable event (new device, provisioning, failed login, sent mail, errors) - routine Sync/Ping requests are not logged individually.

• Debug WBXML (logging.log_wbxml or logging.debug_users) logs full requests and responses including message bodies. Enable it only for a short diagnosis and for chosen mailboxes.

If you redirect output to a file yourself (e.g. a container without journald), rotate it with copytruncate:

/var/log/active-push/active-push.log {
    daily
    rotate 14
    compress
    missingok
    notifempty
    copytruncate
}

In-memory buffers (panel)

Buffer	Limit
Log viewer	logging.ring_size lines (default 2000, 100..100000)
Live request stream	last 500 requests
Minute statistics	24 hours (1440 buckets)
Active mailbox tracking	entries older than 24 h are pruned every minute
Failed login counters / lockouts / login cache	expire automatically, pruned every minute
Loop detection, stale collections, time zone cache	bounded and expiring

All of these are lost on restart by design; persistent history is in the database.

Database

/var/lib/active-push/active-push.db (SQLite, WAL). Hourly housekeeping:

Data	Retention
Hourly statistics	logging.stats_retention_days (default 90)
Audit log	logging.audit_retention_days (default 365)
Panel sessions, setup tokens	removed when expired
Devices not seen for panel.device_inactive_days (default 180, 0 = never)	removed with their sync states and folder statistics; a device that returns later simply resynchronises
Sync states	at most two per folder and device (current + previous for retries); removed with the device, on folder deletion and on FolderSync reset; states untouched for more than 400 days are dropped
Folder/item id maps	removed for mailboxes that no longer have any device
WAL file	checkpointed and truncated every hour
Free pages	incremental auto-vacuum (databases from 0.1.0 are converted once automatically)

Typical size: a few hundred kilobytes per device, mostly sync states of large mail folders. The panel shows the database and WAL size on the Overview page (Server card).

Backups

sqlite3 /var/lib/active-push/active-push.db ".backup '/root/active-push-$(date +%F).db'"

Losing the database never loses mail data: devices perform a full resynchronisation.