syslog-ng to replace syslogd

Iago Rubio iago.rubio at hispalinux.es
Sat Aug 21 17:21:26 UTC 2004


On Sat, 2004-08-21 at 13:30, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 17:49, Iago Rubio <iago.rubio at hispalinux.es> wrote:
> > ITOH it's buffered architecture make it really bad for developers or
> > kernel debuggers as log messages does not arise instantly, but when the
> > buffer is big enought to write it out (the buffering can be disabled).
> 
> How is this different from the regular syslogd?

Well, syslogd will flush out any input "instantly", so it's easier to
get the log message than with buffered output, where log messages will
be flushed out depending on it's size.

> I have configured lots of machines with the "-" option on all log files to use 
> buffering and reduce IO load.  I haven't found any great problems with that, 
> often a kernel bug will break even non-buffered disk IO...

I agree with you.

I'm just pointing that some users and developers will find surprising
that log messages does not appears instantly. I'm sure someone will be
fooled when using `watch tail /var/log/messages` to debug a daemon - for
the buffered IO, and the lack of /var/log/messages in metalog.

In fact the buffering IO of metalog is not a problem at all, when you
know that `killall -USR1 metalog` will turn buffering off, and `killall
-USR2 metalog` will turn it on.

I'm not advocating against metalog. I've got it working in my laptop and
I'm really happy.

I was just pointing to some issues that will appear, if someone turns
metalog the default system logger without warning users.

I'd love to see metalog in Fedora, even to see it as the default syslog
daemon.

Any of both, metalog or syslog-ng, could be great replacements for
syslogd, and can be used in production with confidence.
-- 
Iago Rubio   
- Home page    * http://www.iagorubio.com 
- Last project * http://cssed.sourceforge.net         
- GPG Keyserv  * pgp.rediris.es id=0x909BD4DD
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