From owner-freebsd-arch Wed Feb 12 9:40:19 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E991D37B401 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:40:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net (heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.189]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 607E643F3F for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:40:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from pool0017.cvx22-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.198.17] helo=mindspring.com) by heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18j0rl-0002VJ-00; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:40:14 -0800 Message-ID: <3E4A869B.EABBC83D@mindspring.com> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:38:35 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Wes Peters Cc: Garrett Wollman , arch@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: syslog.conf syntax change (multiple program/host specifications) References: <20030210114930.GB90800@melusine.cuivre.fr.eu.org> <200302120632.36583.wes@softweyr.com> <200302121411.h1CEBRSe025071@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <200302121521.33506.wes@softweyr.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a451de94fcc991560d71476593d5832bce350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Wes Peters wrote: > So you're preferring the software over the human operator. In my world > view, that is completely whacked. It works fine if you're planning on > providing a program to present the configuration to the user in a GUI or > some such interface, but not at all if you expect the user to edit the > configuration file as the normal mode of configuring the program. > > Is THAT answer useful enough? In the fine tradition of Open Source, you build a machine-readable configuration file for the program, and then you leave the tool as something for someone else to write. And no one ever write it. But in *theory*, your replacement for the old code is just as good as the old code. Heck, it's even better! ... In terms of rolling newsyslog in: please don't. As someone else pointed out, there are programs that don't use syslog that do use newsyslog (e.g. Samba, #1 answer, on the board...). The other issue is that "revisionist history" should be a feature of a newsyslog program; that is, if you set size limits and an old version count limit, and you start the program up, it should "take care of" old files. Not something you'd want in syslog. Finally, it's useful to replace syslog with a program that does the same thing *and* remember program state. Just because some people don't follow the machine readable logging draft RFC, doesn't mean that it can't be useful to other people (e.g. for external SNMP instrumentation). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message