Best practices for packaging logfiles

[Jason L Tibbitts III]

I noticed a package in the review queue doing this to manage its
logfile:

%post
/sbin/chkconfig --add %{name}
touch %{_localstatedir}/log/%{name}
chown sip:sip %{_localstatedir}/log/%{name}

%files
[...]
%ghost %attr(0644,sip,sip) %{_localstatedir}/log/%{name}

(the sip user/group are created in %pre).

I was unsure of the difference between this and simply owning the file
in %files; the ownership comes out right, but behavior might differ on
upgrades and there's the issue of rpm -V.  Does %ghost imply something
like %verify(not md5 size mtime)?

That's the best current practice for doing this?

 - J<

[Enrico Scholz]

Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs(a)math.uh.edu&gt; writes:

>  I noticed a package in the review queue doing this to manage its
>  logfile:
>  ...
>  That's the best current practice for doing this? 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Logfiles



Enrico

[Enrico Scholz]

Enrico Scholz <enrico.scholz(a)informatik.tu-chemnitz.de&gt; writes:

> > I noticed a package in the review queue doing this to manage its
> > logfile:
>  ...
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Logfiles 
Wiki conversion removed some important information; original page should
be more readable

       http://fedoraproject.org/wikiold/PackagingDrafts/Logfiles


Enrico

[Jason L Tibbitts III]

> >>>> "ES" == Enrico Scholz
> <enrico.scholz(a)informatik.tu-chemnitz.de&gt; writes: 
ES> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Logfiles

Well, no offense, but your tendencies towards needless obfuscation
require me ask if these are anyone else's best practices.

At the very least, it's reasonable to ask why these were never
submitted to the packaging committee.  At least, I don't recall ever
seeing them.

 - J<