Orthanc should read only known json config files on the ./Configuration directory.

It is a follow on another post about Orthanc generating hundreds of log files.

I temporarily posted a wrong reply on server restart issue, saying that the ACL dialog is the issue, it was not correct.

Here is what caused my Orthanc to generates tons of log message files.

I wanted to keep the backup of the orthanc.json file so what I did was to make a copy of it in the same directory and named as orthanc.backup.json I usually do this to keep the “last good” version around before making changes.

As it turns out any file with .json in that folder will be read upon startup, so I have ended up generating duplicate entries, and that’s how it decided to restart. THe log message is very clear of that error.
I worked around this by changing the backup to orthanc.backup now I am good to go.

I know this is well in the realm of design decision, but I also think it can trip up other users.

I think that making a backup copy of a config file is a reasonable practice, and I am sure this will happen to other people so my recommendation is to only read the known config file names and ignore any others.

Concerning the configuration, you may actually either provide a folder to Orthanc in which case, Orthanc will try to read all .json files in this folder
or you may provide the name of a single file.

For your backup files, I would simply advise you to name it orthanc.json.backup so it’s not taken into account by Orthanc.