Re: [gentoo-dev] logging in openntpd 20080406-r3+

[Paul B. Henson]

On Sun, Dec 01, 2013 at 09:59:37AM -0700, Christoph Junghans wrote:
> > back to the original mechanism where openntpd runs normally as a daemon
> > and logs to syslog
> This is exactly what the syslog use flag in openntpd-20080406-r5 does.
> (And syslog is enabled by default in most profiles.)

The syslog use flag is a bit of a kludge, it makes the ebuild delete a
hardcoded chunk of the init script when it installs it, plus the
logrotate file is still installed unconditionally and could conflict
with syslog logging, so I don't really think that's a good solution. And
syslog isn't enabled in the default profile:

virtz # eselect profile list
Available profile symlink targets:
  [1]   default/linux/amd64/13.0 *

virtz # ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~amd64 emerge -pv =net-misc/openntpd-20080406-r5               
Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild     U  ] net-misc/openntpd-20080406-r5 [20080406] USE="ssl (-selinux) -syslog%" 12 kB

I've seen two reasons for the current kludgy init script:

* boot delays
* openrc likes pid files

Boot delays are avoided by not passing the -s option; and if the -s
option causes a delay longer than 15 seconds that's a bug that should be
fixed, not kludged around.

It's far cleaner to just add pid file support directly to the daemon
rather than try to kludge around it in an init script.

There's really no valid reason not to just put the ebuild back to its
original state, there's no need for a syslog use flag, and running in
debug mode with hardcoded stderr logging isn't exactly a reasonably
alternate logging mode.

> > My offer to debug boot delays in excess of 15 seconds upon supply of a
> > reproducible configuration that causes them still stands too...
> I hope djc, as the original person concerned, can comment on that.

I saw a message from him early in the thread, but haven't seen any
reproducible configuration resulting in an extended delay.