In some email I received from [EMAIL PROTECTED], sie wrote:
[...]
> I"dare say we do not suffer on a "Not Invented Here" syndrome! Personally, I
> have argued to use  syslog-sign and syslog-reliable. I did look into the
> latter
> implementations efforts.
>
> However for syslog-reliable, as good as the protocol is, there are no
> implementations yet!

And you didn't implement it because ?

> We (my customer: "the Dutch tax computer centre") are not developing a
> "box", or
> sw in general!
> We try to run a network :-) And USE the standard. And/or demand (ask
> politely:-) that
> it is used by the boxes (routers, switches, computers, ...) we need.
> We can make small implementations ourselves (or let them make ..) , as last
> resort.
>
> So, Syslog-reliable isn't option NOW. As we can't "get" it!

...and rather than build syslog-reliable, which has been put through a
process of international peer review, by intelligent people, you've gone
away and designed your own protocol.

I imagine this is because it is easier to hack together some software to
do what you want and invent it as you go rather than implement to a pre-
published spec.  (I know, I write software too :)

> And for security and efficiently (of out firewall), UDP isn't "nice". The
> management demands a
> TCP link.
>
> So, I had several options and non options
>     * NO syslog-reliable
>     * NO UDP
>     * NO    "self invented, hard to maintain ..."
>     * Bay something that is open and good    (Non found)
>     * Use opensource, and make sure the customer can maintain it themselves
>     * Implement a simple protocol
>     * ...
>
> As said, syslog-ng, and others, already do use a TCP binding. I have opt for
> that.
> However, as it only sends the rawdata, which make it hard to extent,  should
> it ever
> be needed. E.g. to incorporate  kerberios authentication (which is "hot"
> here:-)

nsyslogd wasn't just rawdata when I last looked but maybe syslog-ng is
much more different now (I haven't looked in ages.)  I could probably
extend the nsyslogd protocol to do Kerberos authentication, as required,
the hard part is, typically speaking, getting things like that to happen
in an asynchronous manner over a network connection it doesn't control.

> So, we tried to extend "your" protocol. We use small headers as "commands",
> but still
> have the /n as sync. But we can also setting up "reverse" connections (to
> fetch log,
> instead of push it) and do other "tricks".
> As this with a small protocol, and a small, simple to maintain
> implementation.

Generating log information is about having it pushed from the source,
not pulled from something else.  What you think of as a neat "trick"
might be seen by others as an obscene 'hack'.

I don't understand what you mean about '/n' as a sync, unless you mean
to say you're using a text protocol.  I threw out doing a protocol like
that because it is harder to make secure (IMHO) because you have to deal
with text things that may have an arbitary length, complicating parsing
the information.

[...]
> I will end with another quote of Darren:
> > that it at least fulfills all the requirements that syslog over TCP has
> > (and that's more than just sending messages in text over a TCP
> connection.)
> Because I really agree with him. We (I) needed a simple protocol.

Simple but not secure or both or maybe neither, just syslog-over-TCP ?

> However, I hope we can cooperate and fill the gape between the current
> not-standard
> pratice of syslog-over-TCP and the "high end" syslog-reliable. I would like

I don't see how anything anyone could offer, at this point in time, can
be classed as anything but "not-standard practive of syslog-over-TCP", to
use your own terminology.

Darren

Reply via email to