[Bug 794727] Re: /var/log/messages is empty after upgrade to natty

[Mike Neish]

I recently upgraded one of my servers to 12.04, and I just noticed
/var/log/messages is empty while doing some routine checks.  My first
thought was "shit, someone broke into my system, and cleaned up all
trace of their activity".  As someone who isn't on the technical board
(just, you know, a "user"), this change appears to be completely
arbitrary and unnecessary.  /var/log/messages was one of the few
"standard" log files that I could depend on across many Linux
distributions.  Making the Linux ecosystem even more fractured is not
helping anyone.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/794727

Title:
  /var/log/messages is empty after upgrade to natty

Status in “rsyslog” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: rsyslog

  After upgrading my laptop from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04 I found out that the file /var/log/messages contains nothing and is 0 bytes long. /var/log/messages.1 contains the last messages before the upgrade.
  Fearing that something went wrong I checked, if the disk is full and if the syslog daemon running. All looked fine, so googled and found this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10674332 and reading the rsyslog changelog (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rsyslog/4.6.4-2ubuntu4) I found out, it is I intentionally change. I strongly oppose this change. /var/log/messages is a long established logfile and available on most unix systems. I can't really buy the performance argument. If the system is logging something it is awake anyway,because it still has to write to /var/log/syslog. If the system is idle it does not log. So I don't see much overhead in logging to two files. Moreover in contrast to the catch-all /var/log/syslog files, which containes a lot of useless information (failed authentications, etc..) it is much easier to spot a real problem in the extract, which /var/log/messages provides.

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