Log window

Open a Log window using the  Open Log Window  command in the  Window  menu. Cirrus provides three rows of controls at the top of this window:

Start  provides the start date (as YYYY-MM-DD) and local time (as HH:MM:SS) for the start of the log extract created when you click on the  Get log  button.

End  provides the end date and local time (same formats as  Start ) for the end of the log extract created when you click on the  Get log  button.

The  Remove privacy  checkbox determines whether the default privacy setting applies to all future log entries. When unselected, the default privacy rule applies, which replaces much of the log entries with <private>. When ticked, that protection is removed, and almost all log entries should reveal their private data. This setting remains in force until you change it, and is applied to all log entries made at that time (not retrospectively) until changed. Whatever changes you make to this checkbox are reflected in all Cirrus’ open windows, and this setting can be changed in any of Cirrus’ open windows.  ⚠️ You are strongly recommended to deselect this before quitting Cirrus, to ensure that the default setting is restored.  ⚠️  Apple has disabled access to this undocumented feature in macOS Catalina.  When running Cirrus in 10.15 and later, this checkbox is disabled and hidden.

The  CloudDocs CloudKit MMCS , and  Other  checkboxes set whether log entries from those subsystems are shown in the text output area. These don’t determine whether those log entries are collected, only whether they are displayed and saved to file.

Get log  obtains an extract from the log for the set period, and displays its messages in the lower text output view in the system monospace font. Change the  size of the text  in the output view using  +  (Command-plus) to make it one point larger, to a maximum of 24 points, or   (Command-hyphen) to make it one point smaller, to a minimum of 4 points. This size is saved as the default for the next time that you open Cirrus, as is the window size and position.

Save  opens a file save dialog in which you should select a file into which to save the current contents of the text output in the large scrolling text area. These are saved in RTF format to preserve their colour coding.

Below the buttons is the scrolling  text output area . You can copy from that, or save using the  Save  button.

Default dates and times are set to capture logs for a period of one minute prior to opening the log window.

Four types of log message are displayed:

from the  com.apple.clouddocs  subsystem, displayed in black/white, controlled by the  CloudDocs  checkbox,

from the  com.apple.cloudkit  subsystem, displayed in red, controlled by the  CloudKit  checkbox,

from the  MMCS  subsystem, displayed in blue, controlled by the  MMCS  checkbox,

those from  cloudd  and  bird  processes and the kernel, displayed in green, and controlled by the  Other  checkbox.

Those checkboxes do not affect the log entries collected by or stored in Cirrus, only the display of those types of log message. They also determine what is saved when you save the output view to an RTF file: types which are not displayed are not saved in the file.

Removing privacy from the log is a significant step, in terms of its effect on log entries. This is performed using the undocumented command

log config --mode 'private_data:on'

which requires elevated privileges, so is handled through an AppleScript call, which displays the dialog below.

To enable changes to privacy, you must authenticate there using your admin user name and password. If you do remove privacy from log entries, remember to enable them again before quitting Cirrus. If you forget, you can always restore the default setting in Terminal using

sudo log config --mode 'private_data:off'

and authenticating.

Each log entry is displayed in the following fixed format:

YY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.sss [subsystem] eventMessage

where [subsystem] is the name of the subsystem, e.g. CloudDocs, the process (either  cloudd  or  bird ), or [other].

Open as many Log Windows as you wish. Close them using the normal red Close button on that window.

This feature is only available when you are logged in as an admin user; each time you open Cirrus. it checks that the log is available, and reports any problems it encounters, with suggested fixes when possible.

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