F20 System Wide Change: No Default Syslog

Fri Jul 19 02:47:25 UTC 2013

----- Original Message -----
> On Wed, 17.07.13 22:08, Ding Yi Chen (dchen at redhat.com) wrote:
> 
> > > Well, this won't "break" systems as the change is only for new
> > > installations. Existing systems will stay exactly as they are, rsyslog
> > > stays installed, and will work as always.
> > 
> > 1. What if they update the system like this:
> >    Backed up user data/script -> Fresh install -> Restore user data/script
> >    For that, it won't work.
> 
> In such a case, you already need to manually reinstall all packages you
> need beyond the default set after the reinstallation. The fewest
> people probably stick to exactly the set of packages we install by
> default for their systems. rsyslog is now one more of those packages you
> need to reinstall after your system is back up.

In that setting, users usually start with default choose the packages they EXPLICITLY
want to install/remove, they are very likely to assume that the rest of the system environment,
including /var/log/messages will still be there.

Besides, rsyslog is in core, which is hidden from users and most of them are unaware what the
rsyslog actually do and generated.

> 
> > 2. Like other already point out, Windows/Fedora dual boot.
> >    You can see /var/log/messages from Windows, but how can you get
> >    journalctl output in Windows?
> 
> Well, as pointed out before, "journalctl" on Windows helps little if you
> cannot access the Linux partitions in the first place, because they are
> ext4 or btrfs.

Do some web search, and you will find out there are handful utility let you read ext4 partitions.

I've used http://www.fs-driver.org/ and it can read ext3 partitions, BTW.

> 
> > > > Please update your knowledge, see:
> > > > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=428097
> > > > 
> > > > They have /var/log/messages, yes, it might be different with ours.
> > > > But yes, they have that.
> > > 
> > > So, they store different stuff in it. The interesting stuff is mostly in
> > > daemon.log on Debian. So with your suggested program you'd miss out all
> > > the interesting bit son Debian. This stuff is certainly not standardized
> > > on Unix systems...
> > 
> > a) If debian output the thing I want in /var/log/messages anyway, why
> > should I care
> >    whether other daemon output in other files?
> 
> Well, most likely it won't include the interesting bits, because they
> are in daemon.log.

Didn't I say I don't care other daemons output to any other files (including daemon.log)?

> I mean, you claim that all distros have /var/log/messages and that
> that's where the interesting stuff goes. And that is simply not true. No
> ifs, it's just simply not true.

Did I claim that all distros and OSes have /var/log/messages? DOS and Windows don't have it.
Happy now?

Let's talk about the system that do have and use /var/log/messages, like Fedora 19 and RHEL6.
How do you deal with the programs that write for either or both that use /var/log/messages.

Do a 
grep -cslR '/var/log/messages' /usr

you will have a brief idea what's the problem size.

> > b) If my environment only contains RHEL and Fedora, why should I care how
> > Debian, Arch and Ubuntu
> >    handle their logs?
> 
> Well, "journalctl" has been available for some time already on Fedora,
> and will be in RHEL7 too, so you shouldn't be too concerned there.

Please note that RHEL6 and RHEL5 are still in their life cycle.
And they are unlikely to have journalctl.

> > > > Innovation should not be the cost of reliability and portability.
> > > 
> > > This change touches neither. /var/log/messages already isn't standard in
> > > whether it exists at all, and what it contains, so we certainly don't
> > > make "portability" worse...
> > 
> > Something is not standard does not mean nobody using it.
> 
> No it doesn't. Every package in the Fedora archive is used by somebody,
> but that doesn't mean we install *all* packages always. We try to
> install a default set that tries neither to be minimal, nor to include
> everything possible. Something that one can work with and that has
> little redundancy.

The problem is, to you, /var/log/messages is redundant, but for others,
it is not. 
By the react of the mailling list and the results from grep the system,
it is still used by those.

Are you sure you are not going to break those? Have you tested those?

> 
> > Especially it is there quite a long time.
> > Remove it simply break their expectation and scripts.
> > For that, you do make the portability worse.
> 
> No, not true by any definition of the word "portability".

Yes, right, you simply let those programs and documents lost their portability. :-P

-- 
Ding-Yi Chen
Software Engineer
Internationalization Group
DID: +61 7 3514 8239
Email: dchen at redhat.com

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