1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to log transmission control of an image forming apparatus connected to a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system for transmitting various logs stored inside an image forming apparatus to a log collection server and promptly checking the logs by accessing the log collection server from a remote place has recently been developed.
Herein, the log is, for example, an image log dealt with by a system such as a security monitoring system, and a sequence log for detecting a problem of a device. These logs are managed on the log collection server.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-253025 discusses a system in which a certain elapsed-time log (e.g., 30-day-old log) is deleted since a hard disk on a server has a capacity limit.
Development of such a system is expected to advance further over the next years.
However, there are cases where a large amount of sequence logs are generated within a short time (within a few days), for example, due to abnormality of an image forming apparatus. In such a case, if logs are continuously transmitted to a log collection server, a hard disk capacity of the log collection server is compressed. (In other words, deletion of a certain elapsed-time log may not be enough for its recovery.)
Moreover, there are cases where data in the log collection server needs to be deleted when a volume of log data stored in the log collection server reaches a certain size. In such a case, there is a possibility that an important log may be deleted simultaneously.