cloudwatch_logger

Overview

The cloudwatch_logger node enables logs generated in a ROS system to get sent to AWS CloudWatch Logs. Out of the box, this node provides the ability to subscribe to the /rosout_agg (rosout aggregated) topic, which all logs using the ROS logging framework will be published to, and sends logs to the AWS CloudWatch Logs service. Logs can be sent to AWS CloudWatch Logs selectively based on log severity. The cloudwatch_logger node can also subscribe to other topics if logs are not sent to /rosout_agg, and it is able to unsubscribe to the rosout_agg topic for getting logs.

The cloudwatch_logger node wraps the aws-sdk-c++ in a ROS service API.

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Summary: AWS CloudWatch Logs can monitor applications and systems using log data. You can create alarms in CloudWatch and receive notifications of particular API activity as captured by CloudTrail and use the notification to perform troubleshooting. By default, logs are kept indefinitely and never expire. You can adjust the retention policy for each log group, keeping the indefinite retention, or choosing a retention periods between 10 years and one day. AWS CloudWatch Logs stores your log data in highly durable storage.

Keywords: ROS Application logs, System logs, AWS CloudWatch Logs service

License

The source code is released under an Apache 2.0.

Author: AWS RoboMaker
Affiliation: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

RoboMaker cloud extensions rely on third-party software licensed under open-source licenses and are provided for demonstration purposes only. Incorporation or use of RoboMaker cloud extensions in connection with your production workloads or commercial product(s) or devices may affect your legal rights or obligations under the applicable open-source licenses. License information for this repository can be found here. AWS does not provide support for this cloud extension. You are solely responsible for how you configure, deploy, and maintain this cloud extension in your workloads or commercial product(s) or devices.

Supported ROS Distributions

• Kinetic
• Melodic

Installation

AWS Credentials

You will need to create an AWS Account and configure the credentials to be able to communicate with AWS services. You may find AWS Configuration and Credential Files helpful.

This node will require the following AWS account IAM role permissions:

• logs:PutLogEvents
• logs:DescribeLogGroups
• logs:DescribeLogStreams
• logs:CreateLogStream
• logs:CreateLogGroup

Building from Source

To build from source you’ll need to create a new workspace, clone and checkout the latest release branch of this repository, install all the dependencies, and compile. If you need the latest development features you can clone from the master branch instead of the latest release branch. While we guarantee the release branches are stable, the master should be considered to have an unstable build due to ongoing development.

• Create a ROS workspace and a source directory

    mkdir -p ~/ros-workspace/src
  

• Clone the package into the source directory .

    cd ~/ros-workspace/src
    git clone https://github.com/aws-robotics/cloudwatchlogs-ros1.git -b release-latest
  

• Install dependencies

    cd ~/ros-workspace 
    sudo apt-get update && rosdep update
    rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
  

Note: If building the master branch instead of a release branch you may need to also checkout and build the master branches of the packages this package depends on.

• Build the packages

cd ~/ros-workspace && colcon build

• Configure ROS library Path

source ~/ros-workspace/install/setup.bash

• Build and run the unit tests

colcon test --packages-select cloudwatch_logger && colcon test-result --all

Launch Files

An example launch file called sample_application.launch is provided.

Usage

Run the node

• With launch file using parameters in .yaml format (example provided)
  • ROS: roslaunch cloudwatch_logger sample_application.launch
• Without launch file using default values
  • ROS: rosrun cloudwatch_logger cloudwatch_logger

Send a test log message

• rostopic pub -1 /rosout rosgraph_msgs/Log '{header: auto, level: 2, name: test_log, msg: test_cloudwatch_logger, function: test_logs, line: 1}'

Verify that the test log message was successfully sent to CloudWatch Logs

• Go to your AWS account
• Find CloudWatch and click into CloudWatch
• On the upper right corner, change region to Oregon if you launched the node using the launch file, or change to N. Virginia if you launched the node without using the launch file
• Select Logs from the left-hand side menu
• With launch file: The name of the log group should be robot_application_name and the log stream should be device name
• Without launch file: The name of the log group should be ros_log_group and the log stream should be ros_log_stream

Configuration File and Parameters

An example configuration file called sample_configuration.yaml is provided. When the parameters are absent in the ROS parameter server, default values are used, thus all parameters are optional. See table below for details.

Advanced Configuration Parameters

Most users won’t need to touch these parameters, they are useful if you want fine grained control over how your logs are stored offline and uploaded to CloudWatch.

Node

cloudwatch_logger

Send logs in a ROS system to AWS CloudWatch Logs service.

Subscribed Topics

• /rosout_agg

  By default in ROS, all logs from applications using ROS standard logging framework are sent to rosout_agg topic. The cloudwatch_logger subscribes to rosout_agg by default.

• /other_topics

  The cloudwatch_logger subscribes to other topics if the parameter server has the topic names in cloudwatch_logger namespace.

Published Topics

None

Services

None

Contributing Guidelines

Thank you for your interest in contributing to our project. Whether it’s a bug report, new feature, correction, or additional documentation, we greatly value feedback and contributions from our community.

Please read through this document before submitting any issues or pull requests to ensure we have all the necessary information to effectively respond to your bug report or contribution.

Reporting Bugs/Feature Requests

We welcome you to use the GitHub issue tracker to report bugs or suggest features.

When filing an issue, please check existing open, or recently closed, issues to make sure somebody else hasn’t already reported the issue. Please try to include as much information as you can. Details like these are incredibly useful:

• A reproducible test case or series of steps
• The version of our code being used
• Any modifications you’ve made relevant to the bug
• Anything unusual about your environment or deployment

Contributing via Pull Requests

Contributions via pull requests are much appreciated. Before sending us a pull request, please ensure that:

1. You are working against the latest source on the master branch.
2. You check existing open, and recently merged, pull requests to make sure someone else hasn’t addressed the problem already.
3. You open an issue to discuss any significant work - we would hate for your time to be wasted.

To send us a pull request, please:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Modify the source; please focus on the specific change you are contributing. If you also reformat all the code, it will be hard for us to focus on your change.
3. Ensure local tests pass.
4. Commit to your fork using clear commit messages.
5. Send us a pull request, answering any default questions in the pull request interface.
6. Pay attention to any automated CI failures reported in the pull request, and stay involved in the conversation.

GitHub provides additional document on forking a repository and creating a pull request.

Finding contributions to work on

Looking at the existing issues is a great way to find something to contribute on. As our projects, by default, use the default GitHub issue labels ((enhancement/bug/duplicate/help wanted/invalid/question/wontfix), looking at any ‘help wanted’ issues is a great place to start.

Code of Conduct

This project has adopted the Amazon Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opensource-codeofconduct@amazon.com with any additional questions or comments.

Security issue notifications

If you discover a potential security issue in this project we ask that you notify AWS/Amazon Security via our vulnerability reporting page. Please do not create a public github issue.

Licensing

See the LICENSE file for our project’s licensing. We will ask you to confirm the licensing of your contribution.

We may ask you to sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) for larger changes.