Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 04:59:38 +0000 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>, Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu> Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: syslog.conf syntax change (multiple program/host specifications) Message-ID: <200302130459.38238.wes@softweyr.com> In-Reply-To: <p05200f10ba70be419852@[128.113.24.47]> References: <20030210114930.GB90800@melusine.cuivre.fr.eu.org> <200302121615.h1CGFdGG025691@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <p05200f10ba70be419852@[128.113.24.47]>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thursday 13 February 2003 03:40, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
>
> I bounce back and forth on XML. I can see that it's useful for
> some things, but I don't think it is appropriate for config
> files that a user is going to type in.
My point exactly. Garrett's point about all those programs having
differing syntax in their configuration files completely ignores
the fact that all those programs do different things; the differing
syntax is a feature of the differences of the program.
> And I certainly don't
> want to *require* XML config files, because some of our (RPI)
> config files are automatically generated and we assume the
> same format of file across a number of unix platforms.
Oh, you can just XML-ize all those systems too. XML is the future,
you know. Actually, XML would be perfect for a metalanguage for
communicating configuration information between disparate systems
because you could then use the generally good XML tools to generate
the local systems flavor of configuration file from the XML. Just
don't make poor human beings read the crap.
> Wes's original proposal is a simple extension to the current
> syntax, and I think we could decide on what we think about that
> as a near-term change, without tieing it to the discussion of
> what to do about XML-izing all config files.
>
> As to Wes's patch, I like the new feature but I don't think the
> config file should be quite so cryptic. I guess I would like
> to think about it some more.
Constructive criticism. The feature as implemented now was done
as a minimal change to effect the outcome we wanted, which is to
keep syslog from filling our /var ramdisk and causing problems.
I'm very open to suggestions of a more intuitive syntax for such
a simple modification, but I'm not trying to duplicate the complete
functionality of newsyslog.
I *would* be amenable to having syslogd start a newsyslog whenever
a file size limit is reached; that might be quite useful. Since
newsyslog can be passed the name of the file to act upon on its
command line, this would be a useful extension. I'll hack that
in at work tomorrow and as soon as I get my -CURRENT box back up
to date I'll produce a patch. The file size limiting might still
be useful for memory-limited applications; as you can see from the
patch the changes are quite small.
--
Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?
Wes Peters wes@softweyr.com
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200302130459.38238.wes>