[Bug 459730] Re: rsyslog doesn't create /dev/xconsole

[Nathan Stratton Treadway]

Scott,

There are two issues discussed in this bug:

1) rsyslog emits a "Could no open output pipe '/dev/xconsole' " warning
message message when it starts up, because /dev/xconsole doesn't exist.

2) after the daily log-rotation cron job, one's xconsole window suddenly
goes dead.


You are correct that issue #1 is just a warning message; this situation can also be corrected "easily" by commenting out the xconsole section of the rsyslog config file.

Issue #2 is caused by the fact that a /dev/xconsole file (one that does
exist) can be readable by rsyslog while it's still running as root
during initial startup, but not when it tries to reopen the log files
after a "reload syslog".

This second issue does cause actual trouble, at least for those of us
who would like to actually use xconsole to monitor our logs.  I'm not
sure the "proper" fix for this condition, but it does seem worthwhile
for the affected Ubuntu packages to work together to allow the
"xconsole" application to work as intended.

(One could argue these two issues should have separate LP bugs... but
when David opened LP: #612900 related to issue #2, it got marked as a
duplicate of this one....)

Nathan

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/459730

Title:
  rsyslog doesn't create /dev/xconsole

Status in “rsyslog” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: rsyslog

  Looks like this was missed in the move to upstart.

  This function was called in init.d/rsyslog start:

  create_xconsole() {
          if [ ! -e /dev/xconsole ]
          then
                  mknod -m 640 /dev/xconsole p
                  chown root:adm /dev/xconsole
                  [ -x /sbin/restorecon ] && /sbin/restorecon /dev/xconsole
          fi
  }

  I can't find any reference to it now. If this is old school then it should be re
  moved from the config.

  rsyslog:
    Installed: 4.2.0-2ubuntu5

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