On Thu, 18.07.13 11:11, Matthew Miller (mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote: > On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 02:19:30PM +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote: > > So, you suggest using "Requires: /var/log/messages" and "Provides: > > /var/log/messages" as indication for this, and the %ghost > > /var/log/messages in the packages in question? > > Sounds good to me! Matthew? > > My main concern with this is that it's a lie. That file only exists because > of the default configuration. In many cases, rsyslog will be configured to > either write different files, or most likely, to write no local files at all > as all data is forwarded. And, as discussed in another subthread, I expect > this last configuration to be more and more common. So, not just a lie, but > a lie which may actually make it harder to use rsyslog in ways other than > the default. > > In an ideal view, it makes most sense to provide the rsyslog default > configuration in a subpackage which puts the /var/log/messages and > /var/log/secure conf files in /etc/rsyslog.d -- then, this subpackage would > provide those files. Unfortunately, in order to preserve behavior on > upgrade, the main package would have to depend on this, kind of making the > distinction moot. Well, I am not sure it's really a "lie". It's reasonably close to the truth, and it would be agood thing anyway if the syslog implementation would own /var/log/messages at least as %ghost. I mean, people can always reconfigure things, and muck around with how things are set up and break stuff. That's OK, people should be able to do that. I think this should really be considered a documentation problem: in the default rsyslog.conf ship a few comments explaining that /var/log/messages is kinda considered API by some other packages, and that the user should only alter its configuration if he knows what he does. Lennart -- Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc. -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
