Duplicate logging?

[David Henningsson]

Michael Schnupp wrote:
> David Henningsson schrieb:
> 
>> I've been in the Linux/Ubuntu world for a while now but I still haven't
>> grasped the logging.
> 
> Logging is done by the logging daemon. (Ubuntu by default uses rsyslogd.)
> You can configure which messages go where. (man rsyslogd.conf)
> In case you wonder if the default configuration makes sense, maybe the
> question page[1] of that package in launchpad is the right place to ask.
> 
> For your own packages (the topic of this list) just log whatever you have
> to log, and let the logging daemon put it on the proper place(s).
> 
> HTH
> Michael
> 
> [1] https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rsyslog/

Thanks for the pointers. There is /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf which
seems responsible for most of the duplicate logging. To me, it would
make more sense if rsyslog ONLY logged to /var/log/syslog by default.

If other packages need other log files, they could install additional
files in /etc/rsyslog.d/ as needed. However, that might give an
additional complexity for those packages having to provide configuration
not only for rsyslog but for all packages that provides
system-log-daemon (at least in the long run). Another option could be to
symlink to /var/log/syslog from some of the other log file names, as a
temporary workaround.

I assume the current duplication has at least the following disadvantages:

* Degradation of life for SSD drives.
* Waste of disk space.
* Waste of CPU and I/O time.

Next question would then be, unless you think this proposal is totally
crazy and against all conventions, where to bring it up. Ubuntu-devel
ML? UDS-M (I will likely go there)? A wishlist bug on Launchpad?

// David