[utah-devel] rsyslog and utah

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement]

Hey Andy,

On 02/20/2013 05:17 AM, Andy Doan wrote:
> As you know, I've been playing with the rsylog branch[1] by adding some
> live logging of the installation. However, I may have hit a bump in the
> road when testing server images. The server install runs from a busybox
> shell which includes a simplified "logger" implementation that doesn't
> seem to work with rsyslog.
I'm curious to know what doesn't work exactly with remote syslog and 
debian-installer based installation (server images)? I haven't found a 
single bug in Debian and Ubuntu about remote logging not working during 
installation.

>
> I don't know all the permutations of installers we have to support, but
> I'm starting to wonder if assuming an installer will have a properly
> functioning rsylog'er is feasible?
>
> This issue coupled with the fact I haven't been that excited about
> dealing with rsyslogd (it seems like it can finicky at times). Has me
> wondering: Do we need something different.
>
> Since I'm new, you might be able to stop me here with a "don't worry".
> If I'm not crazy, then its time to talk solutions. I'll pitch an idea
> and see what you think:
>
> We make 3 assumptions:
>   1) target has network
>   2) target supports "tail -f"
>   3) target includes netcat "nc".
>
> With those assumptions you could basically spawn something like:
>
>   tail -f /var/log/syslog | nc <host> <port>
That won't work on ubiquity based installations because of LP #882147 ( 
overlayfs does not implement inotify interfaces correctly) You'll have 
to use busybox tail instead which uses polling instead of inotify.

>
> somewhere early in the install (I think there's some type of preseed
> support for this).
>
> Then you create some minmial twisted lineReceiver service when UTAH is
> run that listens on an ephemeral port and processes these messages from
> the target.
>
> thoughts?
I think you should first figure why a standard remote logging facility 
like rsyslog doesn't work before adding more complexity (and as a 
consequence more development time, more maintenance and less 
reliability) to UTAH.

>
> 1: https://code.launchpad.net/~nuclearbob/utah/rsyslog
>


-- 
Jean-Baptiste
IRC: jibel