[Kolab-devel] Log management of Kolab from a system administrator view

[Gunnar Wrobel]

"Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)" <lists at infosecurity.ch> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> even appreciating the OpenPKG approach used by kolab of self-contained
> environment i really don't like the approach used for the log files and
> i am proposing some discussion to re-organize them.
>
> Log files are very important, are used for solving problems, analyzing
> the behaviours of the system and system administrator really require
> quick system to search for patterns.
>
> In tipical unix environment this is done trough the 'grep -ir string
> /var/log' .
>
> With kolab you need to go to /kolab/var/imapd/log to see cyrus log, to
> /kolab/var/sasl/log to see saslauthd log, to /kolab/var/openldap/log to
> see openldap log and so on for all other componets.

As mentioned by others this is not really a problem since you can
either use `find ...` or even "grep /kolab/var/**/log/*.log" directly.

> That's really a annoying, the system administrator can't simply do "tail
> -f *".
>
> I suggest, for kolab 2.2 goals, to put all the logs in only one
> directory (es: /kolab/logs) and automatically rotate and archive them
> with a directory structure organized for each day (es:
> /kolab/logs/2007/06/20/daemon_name_subname.log).
>
> This could be done trough modification of FSL definitions on
> /kolab/etc/fsl and trough /kolab/etc/rc.d/* scripts in the rotate.
>
>
> Otherwise we could simplify and add powerfull log management capability
> to Kolab by using an OpenPKG based syslog-ng daemon
> (http://www.openpkg.org/product/packages/?package=syslog-ng) .

Most of the components within Kolab can actually be modified to use
the syslog. Even most of the Kolab-specific packages like
kolab-resource-handlers can be switched.

So I see this as a simple matter of preference. If you wish to use
syslog-ng you can simply install one in the system that is hosting the
Kolab OpenPKG environment and let all Kolab components report to that
syslog-ng. 

I do also believe that we would find many people that would complain
if we'd change the way the logs currently work. Though I actually also
prefer the syslog approach and my native Gentoo version of Kolab
actually reports to syslog most of the time.

Cheers,

Gunnar

-- 
____ http://www.pardus.de _________________ http://gunnarwrobel.de _

    >> Mail at ease - Rent a kolab groupware server at p at rdus <<

p at rdus Kolab work is funded in part by KDAB and the Kolab Konsortium