Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-27 Thread Gene Heskett 
On Friday 27 October 2017 22:47:26 Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

> On 27/10/17 17:52, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Thursday 26 October 2017 21:21:37 Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> >> On 27/10/17 13:02, Gene Heskett wrote:
> >>> On Thursday 26 October 2017 15:22:35 Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
>  " And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX
>  part of Linux"
> >>>
> >>> I'm old enough to have taken phonics in grade school, but that
> >>> obviously invented word could probably be replaced by a 4 letter
> >>> adjective...
> >>
> >> Invented, yes, but over 130 years ago. The term phagocyte was
> >> coined in about 1883 by Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus to describe
> >> the cells discovered by Ilya Mechnikov, winner of the 1908 Nobel
> >> Prize in Medicine
> >
> > I agree.  And obviously you have more educational credits hanging on
> > the wall than I.
>
> Just my medical parents describing their then-teenage children
> devouring food.  :-)

ROTFLMAO!

> Kind regards,

Back at you.  Take care. I don't think either of us wants to make the 
papers.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page

Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-27 Thread Ben Caradoc-Davies 

On 27/10/17 17:52, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Thursday 26 October 2017 21:21:37 Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

On 27/10/17 13:02, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Thursday 26 October 2017 15:22:35 Nicholas Geovanis wrote:

" And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX
part of Linux"

I'm old enough to have taken phonics in grade school, but that
obviously invented word could probably be replaced by a 4 letter
adjective...

Invented, yes, but over 130 years ago. The term phagocyte was coined
in about 1883 by Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus to describe the cells
discovered by Ilya Mechnikov, winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in
Medicine

I agree.  And obviously you have more educational credits hanging on the
wall than I.
Just my medical parents describing their then-teenage children devouring 
food.  :-)


Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Plain text vs. binary (was Re: The new normal of logging)

2017-10-27 Thread The Wanderer 
On 2017-10-27 at 05:36, Darac Marjal wrote:

> A binary format is, really, nothing to be feared, so long as the
> format is as well defined as plain text (because, when you look at 
> it, plain text IS binary, it's just an astoundingly well-agreed 
> encoding).

The binary format underlying plain text does have one additional
noteworthy characteristic, though: it is intended to map *directly* to
something that is, in theory, human-readable. The glyphs which are being
encoded are simply letters, numbers, et cetera; these are almost
universally recognized, and once the trivial translation from binary
form for display is completed, if you don't understand what the result
means you at least have something on which you can base searches and
questions.

With any other binary format, you have to either have the
domain-specific knowledge necessary to understand the meaning of the
glyphs which were encoded into the binary format, or let something which
*does* have that understanding - generally, a specialized tool - perform
an additional layer of translation after translating from binary form
into those glyphs. Only after that can you realistically start to put
together searches and questions if you don't understand the result.
(Barring the sort of people who are sufficiently technically competent
to be able to reverse-engineer file formats in a clean-room environment,
which is a relatively rare skill.)

IMO that's a meaningful additional layer of burden.


Plus, having a *single* format to use for interchange has the advantage
that you only need to have *one* set of tools on hand to translate its
encoded form into the glyphs being represented; if multiple formats
exist, you need to either have the tools for each of them on hand, or be
able to do the work of translating in your head on the fly every time,
which is nontrivial in most cases.

Very few - if any - formats other than plain text are sufficiently
general to be suitable for use for every conceivable
thing-to-be-represented, without needing to be extended for the purpose
(with a corresponding extension of the translating tools). Admittedly
that's because plain text lets you implement other encoding systems on
top of it (from the various human languages, to e.g. INI-file format, to
things like uuencoding, and so forth), but there the fact that the
immediate superficial readability lets you start to form meaningful
questions and searches comes in again; if there's any other file format
which enables something comparable, I'm not finding myself able to think
of it.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-27 Thread Darac Marjal 

On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 02:22:35PM -0500, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:

  On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard 
<[1]j.deboynepollard-newsgro...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Roberto C. Sánchez:

  Is this the new normal, for things to get captured in some systemd log 
[...]?

* [2]https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/294206/5132 Yes.

  Thanks for that. And quoting that article
  " And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX part of 
Linux"
  :-D


In my opinion, most of the bad press that systemd gets is down to its 
implementation, rather than its purpose. Writing an init system that 
spawns shell scripts to start daemons is easy, but the shell scripts 
lead to all sorts of bad code. The declarative syntax of 
systemd/upstart/etc init systems is MUCH cleaner.


Similarly, writing the syslog to a plain text file is easy, but it makes 
parsing times difficult, it can lose some of the finer points of meaning 
and so on. A binary format is, really, nothing to be feared, so long as 
the format is as well defined as plain text (because, when you look at 
it, plain text IS binary, it's just an astoundingly well-agreed 
encoding).





References

  Visible links
  1. mailto:j.deboynepollard-newsgro...@ntlworld.com
  2. https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/294206/5132


--
For more information, please reread.


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Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-26 Thread Gene Heskett 
On Thursday 26 October 2017 21:21:37 Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

> On 27/10/17 13:02, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Thursday 26 October 2017 15:22:35 Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
> >> " And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX
> >> part of Linux"
> >
> > I'm old enough to have taken phonics in grade school, but that
> > obviously invented word could probably be replaced by a 4 letter
> > adjective...
>
> Invented, yes, but over 130 years ago. The term phagocyte was coined
> in about 1883 by Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus to describe the cells
> discovered by Ilya Mechnikov, winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in
> Medicine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Wilhelm_Claus
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élie_Metchnikoff
> https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1908/
> https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1908/mechni
>kov-bio.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocyte
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocytosis
>
> And you would need a verb in the present tense, not an adjective, so
> probably more than four letters.
>
I agree.  And obviously you have more educational credits hanging on the 
wall than I.  My interest in the physical world did not include such 
early medicinal work, I had more interest in such things as capacitors 
and resistors, and am quite comfortable making vacuum tubes, or smart 
sand, do usefull work.

But my formal was terminated at my freshman year in high school by a 
health problem, which when the cause, then several years into my working 
life, an allergy to milk! So stopping that was a huge help. But by then 
it was a bit late to attempt going back to high school, so I kept on 
covering the service benches for electronics related stuff. Eventually 
migrated to  broadcasting, and put in about 25 years occupying the Chief 
Engineers office, last 18 of that as the CE at WDTV here in West 
Virginia, USA. I have been accused of walking on water electronically so 
these days, when I am purchaseing parts to make whatever and they want a 
business name, I am WOWElectronics.

Along the way to 83 yo, I did collect other papers to hang on the wall, 
like a 1st Phone (never cracked a book, walked in cold) and a C.E.T. 
(ditto). Then my new wife, back in '89, has a Bachelors in Music, so she 
had me go take the GED. Didn't hear for 3 weeks, I ran into the test 
administrator at the P.O. one morning & asked about it.  His reply 
was "why do you care? You were just doing it for the exercise, weren't 
you?" But I got it in the mail a couple days later.  And I have a 
Diploma from the University of Hard Knocks, an honorary from the wife's 
alma mater.

Its been quite a ride, all these years.  Some sad parts of course, but 
impressing the frogs, carving pricy wood or making a machine run by 
linuxcnc, and now caring for that wife in the last year that COPD might 
yet give her, all combines to keep me out of the bars.

You do what you have to do...

> Kind regards,

To you too, Ben Caradoc-Davies.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page

Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-26 Thread Joe Pfeiffer 
Gene Heskett  writes:

> On Thursday 26 October 2017 15:22:35 Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <
>>
>> j.deboynepollard-newsgro...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> > Roberto C. Sánchez:
>> >
>> > Is this the new normal, for things to get captured in some systemd
>> > log
>> >
>> >> [...]?
>> >>
>> >> * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/294206/5132 Yes.
>>
>> Thanks for that. And quoting that article
>> " And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX part
>> of Linux"
>>
>> :-D
>
> I'm old enough to have taken phonics in grade school, but that obviously 
> invented word could probably be replaced by a 4 letter adjective...

You got me curious -- apparently phagocytosis was named in 1880.  But
yes, systemd seems to be attempting to subsume all other daemons, and is
pretty worrying for that reason...

Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-26 Thread Ben Caradoc-Davies 

On 27/10/17 13:02, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Thursday 26 October 2017 15:22:35 Nicholas Geovanis wrote:

" And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX part
of Linux"

I'm old enough to have taken phonics in grade school, but that obviously
invented word could probably be replaced by a 4 letter adjective...


Invented, yes, but over 130 years ago. The term phagocyte was coined in 
about 1883 by Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus to describe the cells 
discovered by Ilya Mechnikov, winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Medicine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Wilhelm_Claus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élie_Metchnikoff
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1908/
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1908/mechnikov-bio.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocyte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocytosis

And you would need a verb in the present tense, not an adjective, so 
probably more than four letters.


Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-26 Thread Gene Heskett 
On Thursday 26 October 2017 15:22:35 Nicholas Geovanis wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <
>
> j.deboynepollard-newsgro...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Roberto C. Sánchez:
> >
> > Is this the new normal, for things to get captured in some systemd
> > log
> >
> >> [...]?
> >>
> >> * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/294206/5132 Yes.
>
> Thanks for that. And quoting that article
> " And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX part
> of Linux"
>
> :-D

I'm old enough to have taken phonics in grade school, but that obviously 
invented word could probably be replaced by a 4 letter adjective...

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page

Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-26 Thread Roberto C . Sánchez 
On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 07:46:12PM +0100, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:
> Roberto C. Sánchez:
> 
> > Is this the new normal, for things to get captured in some systemd log
> > [...]?
> > 
> * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/294206/5132 Yes.
> 

That is very informative.  In particular:

| If it can connect (as a client) to an AF_LOCAL datagram socket at
| /run/systemd/journal/syslog it writes journal data there, if forwarding
| to syslog is configured.

I need to make sure that I have that forwarding propery configured on my
systems.

Then also: 

| systemd itself arranges for the standard outputs and errors of (some)
| services to be attached to the /run/systemd/journal/stdout socket. So
| dæmons that log to standard error in the normal fashion have their
| output sent to the journal.

That does seem quite useful and from what I have experienced the last
few days nicely handles the case where something that should log to
syslog calls a command and then ignores its stdout/stderr.  The systemd
journal was seeing that stderr text where syslog was not.

Regards,

-Roberto
-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

Re: The new normal of logging

2017-10-26 Thread Nicholas Geovanis 
On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <
j.deboynepollard-newsgro...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Roberto C. Sánchez:
>
> Is this the new normal, for things to get captured in some systemd log
>> [...]?
>>
>> * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/294206/5132 Yes.
>

Thanks for that. And quoting that article
" And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX part of
Linux"

:-D

The new normal of logging

2017-10-26 Thread Jonathan de Boyne Pollard 

Roberto C. Sánchez:

Is this the new normal, for things to get captured in some systemd log 
[...]?



* https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/294206/5132 Yes.