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

[Alain Spineux]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 2:11 PM, Gunnar Wrobel <wrobel at pardus.de> wrote:
> "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.

Just an idea .... you can create symbolic link to all theses files in
one unique directory :-)
And you get what you want !

>
> 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 <<
>
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>
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-- 
Alain Spineux
aspineux gmail com
May the sources be with you