[logs] Error messages from syslogd

Marcin Antkiewicz marcin at kajtek.org
Thu Jul 12 15:18:02 PDT 2007


>> You're also conflating a couple problems - we're not talking
>> about buggy code, here, we're talking about error handling.
>
> They go hand-in-hand.  Programs have problems for any of a number of
> reasons, which might be internal bugs, and might be external.  A
> well-written program compensates for such problems to the extent
> possible.  Independent of whether the problem is a bug or something
> else, and whether the program is well-written or not, logging helps
> one find out what is failing.

You can have that independent of the system log. Often logging happens 
because it is in a spec - so a programmer will syslog() everything 
(sometimes even making creative uses of facilities), and abuse an already 
existing syslog infrastructure (remote logging, some kind of automated
log combing) because "that's what it is for".

With app logs separate from the system log, there work involved that could 
be very simply avoided. I can see how some of it stems from fear of 
another 2 hour meeting on whether to rotate the log files daily or after 
they hit 1MB.

--
Marcin Antkiewicz


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