[Mageia-dev] Logging + Provides/Requires (Re: [RFC] rsyslog vs journalctl)

Fri Feb 8 16:56:45 CET 2013

'Twas brillig, and Anne Nicolas at 08/02/13 13:07 did gyre and gimble:
+> Le 08/02/2013 13:14, Olav Vitters a écrit :
+>> On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 10:31:42AM +0000, Colin Guthrie wrote:
+>>>   Q) Will we make persistent disk-based journals optional?
+>>>     Yes: Makes it harder to ask a consistent question to extract debug.
+>>>     No: Some people will moan.
+>>
+>> It is either persistent logging or logging in memory right? I assume
+>> people won't understand that it'll log anyways, just in memory. So no
+>> point in giving an option that does not do what people might expect.
+>>
+> 
+> Just one point about this. It was said during meeting that having
+> journalctl by default could break some other software like fail2ban.
+> This should be checked.
+
+Yes this is pretty much the issue I'm trying to address really.
+
+e.g. basesystem package already requires systemd, so there is little
+point in it requiring syslog-daemon too as this is always satisified by
+systemd at present.
+
+My proposal was originally to add a new dep "system-logger" and allow
+systemd to satify that. In the process I would remove the dep from
+various packages that currently have it (cronie, postfix) as systemd is
+now a required component anyway and journald will capture their logs
+happily. The final part would be identifying packages, like fail2ban,
+which parse these logs and therefore do genuinely need something to
+satisfy syslog-daemon requires.
+
+In the future, fail2ban will have direct journal integration (posted the
+link earlier) and thus we can drop the dep when the time comes.
+
+So, I think what I'll do for now, is basically:
+
+1. Forget about system-logger provide/require. It's not needed.
+2. Make systemd not provide syslog-daemon.
+3. Drop syslog-daemon require from basesystem* pkgs.
+4. Drop syslog-daemon require from cronie and postfix (and others where
+it's not strictly needed any more).
+5. Ensure fail2ban does have a require.
+6. Start writing some docs here and there about it.
+
+Feel free to chime in on points 4 & 5 (I'm too stupid to know the right
+urpm* commands to work out what pkgs currently require syslog-daemon to
+evaluate if they really do need it. Also if people can think of any
+other log parsers like fail2ban, please let me know so we can make sure
+they have the right requires.
+
+Cheers
+
+Col
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
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+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+