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freedomlives n00b
Joined: 19 Aug 2011 Posts: 32 Location: Slovakia
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Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 4:31 pm Post subject: Syslog, is it needed? |
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I just noticed that the Gentoo VPS I've been using for the past 2 years doesn't have any syslogd installed. Yet, everything I've been running on there (nginx, mysql, php-fpm) puts a log file there anyway. So I read up a bit on syslog, and notice that it is useful for consolidating log messages from several systems, making alerts to the sysadmin, etc. But for a desktop user, is there any reason it should even be installed? I know, for example, that I can set up my laser print to connect to a syslog server, but as its sitting on the desk next to my computer that doesn't provide me much benefit. This isn't a desperate support question or anything, I've decided for my server to install it and configure to actually email me some errors, but just wondering why the Gentoo Handbook doesn't put it as something optional to install like cron daemon is. |
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djdunn l33t
Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 810
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Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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syslog-ng has a lot of nice features _________________ “Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”
― Plato |
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PaulBredbury Watchman
Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310
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Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:48 pm Post subject: Re: Syslog, is it needed? |
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freedomlives wrote: | puts a log file there anyway |
How about e.g. iptables logging?
I expect there's many apps which will just assume you're running a logger. |
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Inekris n00b
Joined: 06 Jul 2011 Posts: 5
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Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 10:52 pm Post subject: |
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Uhm, no. Strictly speaking, there is no need for a logdaemon or logs in general.
Having said that. There is, as PaulBredbury points out, software that expects that there is a logging daemon in place. Gentoo takes care of that, if you emerge such software.
There is a far better reason to have a logging daemon. Lots of software actually use such a daemon to log their errors, problems and such. IF you find yourself wondering why a program isn't running, or acts weird, the logs are a good place to start. A lot of software offers the option, or have it default configured, to log to files directly. That is fine, but an administrative nightmare if you have every program writing it's own logfiles.
But, basically, no you don't need a log daemon, but it can make your life easier. |
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Anon-E-moose Watchman
Joined: 23 May 2008 Posts: 6095 Location: Dallas area
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Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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is it needed? No
is it required? No
is it helpful, especially when oddities show up? Not only yes, but hell yes
If one is worried about disk space, then there are remote options or even just keeping the last/latest log ie. only one log around
As with anything else, the choice is yours. _________________ PRIME x570-pro, 3700x, 6.1 zen kernel
gcc 13, profile 17.0 (custom bare multilib), openrc, wayland |
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albright Advocate
Joined: 16 Nov 2003 Posts: 2588 Location: Near Toronto
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:37 am Post subject: |
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sometimes, if everything is running perfectly, I turn off the logger
but -- gentoo -- that is rare _________________ .... there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth
doing as simply messing about with Linux ...
(apologies to Kenneth Graeme) |
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luismw Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Jan 2010 Posts: 91
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:17 am Post subject: |
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For a regular, stable tree, desktop user, it is most definitely optional, in my experience.
I do not use syslog, furthermore, I have /var/log/ mounted in RAM, so I lose all logs when I power down. I've been doing this during my four years with Gentoo and never regretted it.
But maybe it is just that I like living dangerously.
For a server, and specially a remote server, now that's a different story. |
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depontius Advocate
Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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Minor anecdotal contribution...
I have one system that for years has been a desktop, as well as my main (only) mythbackend server. Many years ago it started getting a bit flakey, doing spontaneous power-downs, I believe shortly after adding an extra hard drive for recording space. I have had syslog-ng running on that system since installation, but of course there was nothing in the logs because it would only be dumb luck for them to get synced before the crash.
I had a suspiction that the new hard drive might be causing the power supply to cave, even though it should have only been a minor power adder. So I did 2 things: 1 - I added an lm-sensors script to a cron job, reading the power supplies and termperature fairly frequently, sending the results to syslog. 2 - I added remote logging back to my main server. Next crash there was nothing in the remote log, and the most recent supply readings looked decent. I decided it was a flakey power supply, and bought a new one with a somewhat higher rating. The crashes stopped. In this case the remote syslogging was a negative result, but an informative one. _________________ .sigs waste space and bandwidth |
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