> I've been been recently working on changes to improve how the server
> logs are handled to make it more straightforward to use commonly
> used tools for log rotation (like logrotate) out of the box. I'd
> like to solicit some comments on the subject.
>
> Currently, the when doing file-based logging, the servers create a
> new log file on each restart. The current log is renamed to a file
> with a extension of .old. The existing .old file is overwritten. In
> older versions, by default, the server processes were restarted
> weekly, so this made for a rudimentary log rotation. (There is no
> check on size or time on the .old file when the server restarts, so
> one annoying outcome is you can lose log information in the case a
> server process is restarted or crashes back to back.)
>
> I propose in some future release of openafs this behavior be
> deprecated and, by default, the server would simply append to the
> already existing log file on startup. Also, each server would handle
> the HUP signal to (at least) reopen the log file when it is rotated
> by an external tool such as logrotate. A .pid file for each server
> process would be created to allow the log rotate tool to signal the
> server processes to reopen log files after rotating the log files.
>
> The old behavior of renaming the logs at startup, deleting the
> existing .old file, would be available as a run-time option. Sites
> would be able to set this option as a command line switch for the
> server programs, and set bosserver to do weekly restarts (which, by
> the way, is no longer the default in the upcoming 1.6.x series).
If the wish list is open, the ability to log to a pipe so that one could
use
a tool such a cronolog would be convenient for us.
-- David Boldt
<[email protected]>
