Re: [Astlinux-devel] [Astlinux-users] Stopping logging of Crontab

[Michael K. <li...@mk...>]

Hi Lonnie,

OK, "CRON_LOG_METHOD" sounds good to me.
It depends what you do with the system, for most people this might be irrelevant.

Michael (AU), what do you think?

Michael

> Am 30.09.2023 um 14:10 schrieb Lonnie Abelbeck <li...@lo...>:
> 
> Hi Michael (DE),
> 
> Logging only errors is not an option AFAIK. The default crond log level is 8, which is the least verbose.
> 
> I briefly considered a rc.conf variable, something like:
> --
> ## CRON Daemon
> #CRON_LOG_METHOD="none"  # Log Methods: "syslog", "file" (/var/log/cron.log), or "none". Default is "syslog"
> --
> Additionally, logrotate would need to rotate /var/log/cron.log if it exists.
> 
> Then I questioned whether it would be worth the trouble?
> 
> Lonnie
> 
>> On Sep 30, 2023, at 5:37 AM, Michael Keuter <li...@mk...> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi, 
>> 
>> I find that logging also sometimes annoying (so I filter it out for the status tab.
>> 
>> What about an additional "rc.conf" variable (default is NO):
>> 
>> CRON_LOG_ERRORS_ONLY=yes
>> 
>>> Am 30.09.2023 um 03:53 schrieb Lonnie Abelbeck <li...@lo...>:
>>> 
>>> Hi Michael,
>>> 
>>> Yes, "building our own image" is the correct way to tweak this. :-)
>>> 
>>>> • Is it ok to do this?
>>> 
>>> Not in general, but in this specific case it is probably fine.
>>> 
>>> If you do the 'sed -i ...' as you stated, you are no longer using the read-only base image '/mnt/asturo/etc/init.d/crond' file, instead you are creating an edited writable '/mnt/asturw/etc/init.d/crond' overlay file.  This will work as long as any future base image /etc/init.d/crond file does not have important changes your edited copy would not contain.
>>> 
>>> The good news for this specific file, it was last changed on "Nov 2, 2015" and is probably not likely to change in the near future.  As such, your 'sed -i ...' may be a useable fix until you are building our own image.
>>> 
>>> Understand that when the day comes and you build an image with the fix, you would need to remove the '/mnt/asturw/etc/init.d/crond' file to see the read-only base image version.
>>> 
>>>> • Will the changes disappear after an upgrade?
>>> 
>>> The newly created/edited '/mnt/asturw/etc/init.d/crond' file will be used after any upgrade.
>>> 
>>> Lonnie
>>> 
>>>> On Sep 29, 2023, at 7:44 PM, Michael Knill <mic...@ip...> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Lonnie
>>>> 
>>>> Moving this to the developer list.
>>>> So as part of our upgrade we will run ‘sed -i 's/^  crond$/  crond -L \/dev\/null/g' /etc/init.d/crond’ which seems to work fine.
>>>> So my questions are:
>>>> • Is it ok to do this?
>>>> • Will the changes disappear after an upgrade?
>>>> 
>>>> We have decided that moving forward (timeframe unknown) we will be forking the repository and building our own image (finally you say!).
>>>> We had toyed with the idea of completely rebuilding the system on standard platforms but now want to continue with Astlinux because of its reliability and small footprint.
>>>> As such, the above will be unnecessary eventually.
>>>> 
>>>> Regards
>>>> Michael Knill
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: Lonnie Abelbeck <li...@lo...>
>>>> Date: Friday, 29 September 2023 at 4:43 am
>>>> To: AstLinux Users Mailing List <ast...@li...>
>>>> Subject: Re: [Astlinux-users] Stopping logging of Crontab
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Michael,
>>>> 
>>>> Looking at the /etc/init.d/crond init script, here [1]
>>>> 
>>>> If the line "crond" was changed to "crond -L /var/log/crond.log" it would disable syslog and use that file ... but may need rotating if it gets large.
>>>> 
>>>> If the line "crond" was changed to "crond -L /dev/null" it would disable syslog and disable logging (ie. to /dev/null).
>>>> 
>>>> BTW, I manually tested both cases to be certain.
>>>> 
>>>> Lonnie
>>>> 
>>>> [1] https://github.com/astlinux-project/astlinux/blob/09e87eff8bca82bf4afab8dbe09560737dd80d5c/project/astlinux/target_skeleton/etc/init.d/crond#L38
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Sep 27, 2023, at 8:01 PM, Michael Knill <mic...@ip...> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi group
>>>>> 
>>>>> Replying to this email again. I do understand below but just wondering if there is any way to turn off Cron logging totally or send to a separate log file?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Regards
>>>>> Michael Knill
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> From: Lonnie Abelbeck <li...@lo...>
>>>>> Date: Friday, 31 March 2023 at 1:01 am
>>>>> To: AstLinux Users Mailing List <ast...@li...>
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Astlinux-users] Stopping logging of Crontab
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi Michael,
>>>>> 
>>>>> The (busybox) crond daemon has a syslog level setting which defaults to 8, the least verbose log level.  So no help there.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Using the filter for the Status Tab, is a reasonable idea.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Personally, when executing shell commands on a regular interval of seconds/minutes, I prefer to use a bash shell script and the sleep builtin. (Using the sleep builtin keeps from spawning a new process whenever 'sleep' is called).
>>>>> 
>>>>> The simplest example of this is the 'msmtpqueue' bash script [1]
>>>>> 
>>>>> Basic code setup and loop:
>>>>> --
>>>>> #!/bin/bash
>>>>> 
>>>>> LOCKFILE="/var/lock/foobar.lock"
>>>>> 
>>>>> # Robust 'bash' method of creating/testing for a lockfile
>>>>> if ! ( set -o noclobber; echo "$$" > "$LOCKFILE" ) 2>/dev/null; then
>>>>> echo "foobar: already running, lockfile \"$LOCKFILE\" exists, process id: $(cat "$LOCKFILE")."
>>>>> return 9
>>>>> fi
>>>>> 
>>>>> # Load 'sleep' builtin if it exists
>>>>> if [ -f /usr/lib/bash/sleep ]; then
>>>>> enable -f /usr/lib/bash/sleep sleep
>>>>> fi
>>>>> 
>>>>> #seconds to wait
>>>>> wait=300
>>>>> 
>>>>> trap 'rm -f "$LOCKFILE"; exit $?' INT TERM EXIT
>>>>> 
>>>>> while true; do
>>>>> # do stuff
>>>>> 
>>>>> sleep $wait
>>>>> done
>>>>> 
>>>>> rm -f "$LOCKFILE"
>>>>> trap - INT TERM EXIT
>>>>> --
>>>>> 
>>>>> Look at the actual code [1] for finer details.  Another fairly simple example, asterisk-sip-monitor [2] which adds a PID file that can be removed to exit the script.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Lonnie
>>>>> 
>>>>> [1] https://github.com/astlinux-project/astlinux/blob/master/package/msmtp/msmtpqueue.sh
>>>>> 
>>>>> [2] https://github.com/astlinux-project/astlinux/blob/master/package/asterisk/asterisk-sip-monitor
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mar 29, 2023, at 11:39 PM, Michael Knill <mic...@ip...> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Short of putting in a filter for the Status Tab, is there any way to stop Crontab logging to Syslog.
>>>>>> I now have a process that is run every 10 minutes and its annoying that it logs to Syslog each time.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Regards
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Michael Knill
>>>>>> Managing Director