Re: [Fwd: Bug#353758: monit: suboptimal logging reduces usefulness]

[Jan-Henrik Haukeland]

Absolutely interesting. Not sure if I like syslog's severity flags as  
part of the argument list though, another option could be to create  
either macros or new function-wrappers around log_log() to have a  
couple of new functions such as info(), error() and debug() and use  
them instead of e.g. log(LOG_ERR,..)



On 20. feb. 2006, at 21.17, Martin Pala wrote:

> Looks interesting ... what do you think?
>
> We should probably support the event severity. I'm +1 to add it to  
> the monit TODO list (Wouter's help with the implementation could be  
> great :)
>
> Martin
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Bug#353758: monit: suboptimal logging reduces usefulness
> Resent-Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:04:00 UTC,	Mon, 20 Feb 2006  
> 10:04:03 -0800
> Resent-From: Wouter Verhelst <address@hidden>
> Resent-To: address@hidden
> Resent-CC: Stefan Alfredsson <address@hidden>
> Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 10:59:58 +0100
> From: Wouter Verhelst <address@hidden>
> Reply-To: Wouter Verhelst <address@hidden>, address@hidden
> To: Debian Bug Tracking System <address@hidden>
>
> Package: monit
> Version: 1:4.6-1
> Severity: important
> Tags: patch
>
> Hi,
>
> Monit has the ability to log events to syslog. For a monitoring  
> utility,
> this is very useful -- but monit logs everything at level LOG_ERR, so
> critical messages about services that failed or were lost are  
> intermixed
> with debugging messages about the monit service starting up or even
> checking whether something is still running.
>
> I'm currently configuring a cluster where monitoring is done through a
> third-party service which has the ability to create events from syslog
> messages. To reduce event clutter, however, we want to make sure that
> nonimportant messages are not logged as events; the fact that monit  
> logs
> everything at the same level isn't very helpful for that.
>
> I'm attaching a quick-and-dirty patch which applies to monit-4.5 as it
> is in sarge, and which is the version that I'm currently using on this
> cluster. It's ugly, but it does what I needed it to do and was all I
> could come up with in the short timeframe that was given for this
> project. I know that's not very helpful; however, if upstream is
> interested, I'd be happy to help clean it up and provide a more robust
> method to differentiate log levels.
>
> All that being said, I question some bits of the code...:
>
> log("%s: Error opening the log file '%s' for writing -- %s\n",
>    prog, Run.logfile, STRERROR);
>
> If opening the log file failed, presumably so will writing to it.

log prints to stderr as well..


> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: testing/unstable
>   APT prefers unstable
>   APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
> Architecture: powerpc (ppc)
> Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
> Kernel: Linux 2.6.15.4
> Locale: address@hidden, address@hidden  
> (charmap=UTF-8)
>
> Versions of packages monit depends on:
> ii  libc6                         2.3.6-1    GNU C Library: Shared  
> libraries an
> ii  libssl0.9.8                   0.9.8a-7   SSL shared libraries
>
> monit recommends no packages.
>
> -- no debconf information
>
> --
> Fun will now commence
>   -- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4

--
Jan-Henrik Haukeland
Mobil +47 97141255