Today's update greatly improves the ability to debug the Gateway Edge Agent (GEA) by introducing remotely streamed container logs. This update also adds a Service Credential for Loggly, which improves the overall security for applications utilizing the Loggly service.
Gateway Edge Agent Log Streaming
The remote debugging of Edge Workflows has always existed through the use of the Debug Node. There are scenarios, however, where the node won't help identify a problem. For example, if you're using a Serial Trigger and the Gateway Edge Agent does not have permission to open the serial device, the trigger will fail and the resulting workflow will never run. To debug these types of issues, you're required to inspect the GEA's Docker container logs.
Prior to today's update, viewing the GEA's logs required access to the gateway's host OS (usually through SSH). Gaining access to fielded gateways, especially when using cellular connections, was often challenging and sometimes impossible.
Today's update introduces the ability to stream the GEA's logs directly to your browser. A buffer of recent log messages is maintained in the agent and, on connection of an agent log debug stream, those historical messages are returned. Leaving the stream open allows additional messages to reach the browser remotely in real time.
The screenshot above shows an error that prevents a workflow from running and can only be diagnosed by inspecting the GEA's container log. The ability to now do this remotely greatly improves how quickly errors can be identified and resolved.
Loggly Service Credential
When it comes to application-specific logging, we recommend using Loggly. Services like Loggly are an important part of production applications and are purpose-built to store and navigate large volumes of custom log data.
Last year we released the Loggly: Write Node. Today's update adds an additional layer of security by introducing the Loggly Service Credential.
Service Credentials provide a secure way to store access tokens for other services. These tokens have an extra layer of encryption and can never be directly retrieved once they've been uploaded.
If you're currently using Loggly in your Losant applications, we highly recommend migrating your workflows to use the new service credential.
Other Updates
As always, this release comes with several minor features and improvements, including:
- The global duration and resolution selectors can now be displayed for Experience Dashboard pages.
- Edge Compute and Gateway device pages now include a "Peripherals" tab that lists all Peripherals linked to the device.
- The OPC UA Trigger now includes a
dataTypefield on the resulting payload to communicate the tag's underlying data type. - The MQTT Integration and the Gateway Edge Agent MQTT Trigger now support connecting to external brokers over MQTT v5.
What’s Next?
With every new release, we listen to your feedback. By combining your suggestions with our roadmap, we can continue to improve the platform while maintaining its ease of use. Let us know what you think in the Losant Forums.