Hi,
I read Qmail's documentation again and I realized that DJB didn't mention
logging other than qmail-send. Is logging obsolete? I don't think so. But
why other (smtpd, qmtpd, but most importantly pop3d) services lack the
support of logging?
IMHO the technology behind qmail logging is wrong. These inetd-controlled
services cannot use stderr for logging (as tcpserver), and none of DJB's
software use syslog. Therefore no logging is applied to these softwares.
Anyone who say 'when a connection is made it's enough to log it's remote ip
number' is wrong. A customer of mine wanted to log the time, remote IP,
password checking failure, status informations about any POP3 connections
just because they wanted to track down their would-be hacker employees.
It was just a bit of hack in the source code.
But here? Here is no way to do it.
I see two solutions. The first one is not likely to be realized: use
syslog. The another one is much better. My idea is the same as in
qmail-start: tcpserver should open a file descriptor for piping through a
logger program. The service program (qmail-pop3d for example) should check
if this fixed fd number is exists.
Any comments?
--
Regards: Kevin (Balazs)
