Christoph Haas wrote:
Fellow Debianistas... At work we are using syslog-ng a lot and it's very useful for a central logging server. However I don't like the syntax because it's verbose and typo-prone. So I was looking at metalog and seeing it orphaned I decided to adopt it (#423299). I've started bringing the package into good shape again. There is just an issue with the paths and files where metalog writes syslog informaton to. The difference to the sysklogd... sysklogd: /var/log/mail.log /var/log/mail.log.0 /var/log/mail.log.1.gz /var/log/mail.log.2.gz
Mmmh. Strictly speaking, sysklogd logs mail to /var/log/mail.log, along with duplicating (!!) much of the content to (IIRC) /var/log/messages and /var/log/mail.{err,info,warn}. .0, .1.gz, etc are created by the non-logrotate widget Debian uses for rotating system logs.
In general, I would say as a sysadmin that any syslog daemon that does not allow me to configure any given log facility and priority to (at least!) an arbitrary file wherever I want it is inherently broken. Bonus points for log-to-pipe, extra credit for simple, useful redirect-to-remote-system capabilites. Built-in log rotation is "nice to have" but it's Yet Another Log Rotator, and IMO there are already too many fingers in that pie.
-kgd