Re: [gentoo-user] syslog-ng: how to read the log files

Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@×××××.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 3:41 AM, <covici@××××××××××.com> wrote:
> >
> > Marc Joliet <marcec@×××.de> wrote:
> >
> > > Am Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:41:50 +0100
> > > schrieb lee <lee@××××××××.de>:
> > >
> > > > Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk> writes:
> > > >
> > > > > On Wed, 18 Feb 2015 21:49:54 +0100, lee wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >> > I wonder if the OP is using systemd and trying to read the
> journal
> > > > >> > files?
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Nooo, I hate systemd ...
> > > > >>
> > > > >> What good are log files you can't read?
> > > > >
> > > > > You can't read syslog-ng log files without some reading software,
> usually
> > > > > a combination of cat, grep and less. systemd does it all with
> journalctl.
> > > > >
> > > > > There are good reasons to not use systemd, this isn't one of them.
> > > >
> > > > To me it is one of the good reasons, and an important one.  Plain text
> > > > can usually always be read without further ado, be it from rescue
> > > > systems you booted or with software available on different operating
> > > > systems.  It can be also be processed with scripts and sent as email.
> > > > You can probably even read it on your cell phone.  You can still read
> > > > log files that were created 20 years ago when they are plain text.
> > > >
> > > > Can you do all that with the binary files created by systemd?  I can't
> > > > even read them on a working system.
> > >
> > > What Canek and Rich already said is good, but I'll just add this: it's
> not like
> > > you can't run a classic syslog implementation alongside the systemd
> journal.
> > > On my systems, by *default*, syslog-ng kept working as usual, getting
> the logs
> > > from the systemd journal.  If you want to go further, you can even
> configure
> > > the journal to not store logs permanently, so that you *only* end up
> with
> > > plain-text logs on your system (Duncan on gentoo-amd64 went this way).
> > >
> > > So no, the format that the systemd journal uses is most decidedly *not*
> a reason
> > > against using systemd.
> > >
> > > Personally, I'm probably going to uninstall syslog-ng, because
> journalctl is
> > > *such* a nice way to read logs, so why run something whose output I'll
> never
> > > read again?  I recommend reading
> > > http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/journalctl.html for examples of the
> kind of
> > > stuff you can do that would be cumbersome, if not *impossible* with
> regular
> > > syslog.
> >
> > Except that I get lots of messages about the system journal missing
> > messages when forwarding to syslog, so how can I make sure this does not
> > happening?
>
> Could you please show those messages? systemd sends *everything* to the
> journal, and then the journal (optionally) can send it too to a regular
> syslog. In that sense, it's impossible for the journal to miss any message.
>
> The only way in which the journal could miss messages is at very early boot
> stages; but with a proper initramfs (like the ones generated with dracut),
> even those get caught. You get to put an instance of systemd and the
> journal inside the initramfs, and so it's available almost from the
> beginning.
>
> And if you use gummiboot, then you can even log from the moment the UEFI
> firmware comes to life.

So, I get lots of messages in my regular syslog-ng /var/log/messages
like the following:
Feb 23 12:47:52 ccs.covici.com systemd-journal[715]: Forwarding to
syslog missed 15 messages.

So, I saw a post on Google to up the queue length, and I uped it to 200,
but no joy, still get the messages like the one above.


-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@××××××××××.com