As long as the logging can be turned of easily, I don't see too many downsides to this apart from centralising detective work it could also be a useful learning tool for users new to unix.
Perhaps a simple log consisting of: dmesg list with the following: time /path/to/daemon switches success/failure maybe error code/message returned by daemon joe On 02 Apr 2012, at 18:57, corey clingo wrote: > On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 3:30 AM, Joseph A Borg <[email protected]> wrote: >> sorry to raise this again but would it be possible to add a startup log in >> /var/log that documents system startups in some detail? >> >> it could be toggled in rc.local or other rc config >> >> Having a history of daemons active at startup and their failures could help >> those who lack methodical documenting skills when they mess with the system. >> After all not everyone is a full time sysadmin >> >> I'm presently struggling hard to understand where rc is failing to start some >> stuff but I'm loath of asking here as I'm sure most of the time it's >> something >> stupid like a space after variable assignment in a config file. >> >> regards > > My 2c: since every daemon has a different way of indicating that it > started up OK, I'm not sure how you would do this at top level in the > general case. I haven't looked at the new rc.d framework yet (only > installed 5.0 on one firewall box despite the fact that I've > pre-ordered 5.1 :), but with other similar systems the "startup was > good" determination code is in the individual daemon scripts for this > reason, and uses the startup system's framework to report that back to > the supervising script or program. > > In your specific case, since you know the problem is with nsd, I'd > edit the nsd startup script (or configuration file) to turn on a lot > of debugging info and go look in /var/log/<whatever> to see what's > happening. Maybe my head is stuck in some classic Unix mud, but I'm > used to doing this, and don't see it as a huge problem (beats the crap > out of, say, the Windows registry). > > Corey
