#14 Patch: added "logfile" directive

[Anonymous]

I use it to log directly to /dev/tty7 (virtual console
#7, alt-f7) and I'm planning to use it to log to a log
server throught a named pipe and socat(8).

logfile = "/path/to/logfile"

If logfile doesn't exists a plain file will be created.
Plain files will be rotated following "maxsize" and
"maxtime" values (only one backup file, hardcoded
suffix ".old").
Special files are allowed (open flag O_NOCTTY prevent
setting /dev/tty* as controlling terminal, flag
O_NONBLOCK and SIGPIPE catching allow write to named
pipes when noboby is reading).

License: Public domain

[Nobody/Anonymous]

metalog08-rc1-logfile.patch

[Mike Frysinger]

you can accomplish this in a round about way by using the command directive and having it do the `echo` to a specific file

[Martin von Gagern]

"echo" has the added overhead of a process invocation.

There are scenarios where you want to give access to recent messages of some high traffic log source without actually writing large amounts of these logs to file. Firewall logs come to my mind. In such cases, the extra overhead of process creation might prevent that approach as well.

Another thing this logfile patch reminds me of: there are distros out there (Debian and Ubunto among them, iirc) that refuse to ship metalog, mainly because it can't be configured in such a way as to reproduce the standard log file naming conventions of those distros, with names in a single dir instead of multiple dirs. I'm not sure if this patch would be enough to solve that, but it should be a major step towards that goal.

I haven't used that patch in production use myself, but I'd love to see it included in metalog nevertheless.

[Mike Frysinger]

i didnt say using echo was the final answer (notice the report is still open). i was giving people information to get what they want done with all current releases.