Re: changing the default syslog daemon for lenny?

[Michael Biebl]

Guillem Jover wrote:

Hi,

On Thu, 2008-01-31 at 00:11:44 +0100, Michael Biebl wrote:

For 12.) and 28.), I'd file a wishlist bug providing a config file
snippet for /etc/rsyslog.d/

Can we please use /etc/syslog.d/ instead? this way we don't get locked
in any specific implementation. I'm preparing a patch for
inetutils-syslogd to support that, and it might also make sense to
require all system-log-daemon providers to support that dir as well.

I'd rather not do that. There is no common config file format, that all sylog daemons understand. E.g. you can't mix syslog-ng configuration with metalog or rsyslog. The additional functionality of rsyslog is implemented via special directives, which other syslog daemons won't understand. So, I don't think this is a good idea.

And finally, if it is approved that rsyslog should be become the default
system-log-daemon, I'd file wishlist bugs against the remaining packages
to change the dependency to rsylog | system-log-daemon, where
appropriate.

rsyslogd seems to have a lot of features, and it's a bit big compared
to other implementations, do normal users need all that stuff?
Sysadmins can easily change it, and I bet most of the users do not
care much what syslogd is installed as long as it's just logging.

Regarding memory usage, the next major release of rsyslog will allow to load only required functionality via shared modules. So you can fine-tune rsyslog to your needs. The default rsyslog installation could be setup to only support local logging, advanced features like remote logging via udp or tcp could be enabled on demand.

The list of syslogd sorted by Installed-Size:

Package: socklog-run
Installed-Size: 148

Package: sysklogd
Installed-Size: 212

Package: inetutils-syslogd
Installed-Size: 216

Package: syslog-ng
Installed-Size: 552

Package: rsyslog
Installed-Size: 672

Cheers,
Michael
--
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?

That's mostly because of lots of documentation in /usr/share/doc/rsyslog. If you think that's an issue, I could split out the doc into a separate package.

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