Re: MBF: drop dependencies on system-log-daemon
On Mon, 27 May 2024 at 13:59, Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 27 May 2024 at 03:29:53 +0100, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> > The list of affected packages according to apt-cache showpkg is not
> > that long either:
> >
> > anacron
> > approx
> > fail2ban
> > fwlogwatch
> > heartbeat
> > hippotat-server
> > inetutils-ftpd
> > inetutils-inetd
> > inetutils-talkd
> > inetutils-telnetd
> > ldirectord
> > logcheck
> > lyskom-server
> > prelude-lml
> > psad
> > request-tracker4
> > request-tracker5
> > rlinetd
> > snort
> > socklog-run
> > socklog-run:i386
> > spamd
> > sympa
> > xinetd
> > xwatch
> > zoneminder
>
> I think we can divide these into: packages that want to write to a logging
> service via the syslog protocol, and packages that want to read a
> traditional plain-text syslog file.
>
> For packages that want to write out messages via syslog(3) or equivalent
> and have them get written out somewhere that the sysadmin can see them,
> I agree that the systemd Journal (whether persistent or volatile) is
> sufficient to provide a suitable log sink. Obviously many sysadmins will
> want these messages to persist across a reboot, but that's a configuration
> choice, for which I think defaulting to persistent but allowing volatile
> at the sysadmin's own risk is a good arrangement.
>
> However, for packages that want to read a traditional /var/log/syslog
> or similar, notably logcheck, I think it might still make sense to declare
> a dependency on system-log-daemon - this is not functionality that the
> systemd Journal provides. Obviously the same information exists and can
> be retrieved by journalctl(1) or via libsystemd, or received and written
> out to the traditional flat file over time by rsyslog or equivalent,
> but it's no longer provided as a flat file on disk by default.
Yes this sounds reasonable - do you already have an idea about which
is which, from the list above? And it's fine if the answer is no, I
can look it up myself, just in case you already know about some of
those.
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