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Bug#1003728: debian-edu-config: nullmailer pollutes syslog on roaming workstations



On  Fr 08 Sep 2023 08:39:10 CEST, Guido Berhoerster wrote:

Now there are different ways to address this:

- as suggested above the quick fix would be to discard messages from
  nullmailer in rsyslog on tjener, I think we should not discard them on
  the client so they still go into the local journal which should have
  size limits (see draft MR:
  https://salsa.debian.org/debian-edu/debian-edu-config/-/merge_requests/26)

Problematic in real setups is the client's /var directory. On clients, there is no extra /var/log/ mountpoint, so on clients, /var runs full at some point with nullmailer pumping its endless messages into syslog and mail.log.

And indeed, esp. clients should have size limits for syslog and journal. (Note that not only the journal needs a limitation, also the syslog et al. files). But maybe, this should come in two separate changes / be reported as separate bugs.

- we could also switch the FAI installations to the exim4 smarthost
  configuration like manual installs, then the question is whether exim4
  should log to syslog or not

This is actually my favourite here: I don't have a clue / can't remember in detail, why I chose nullmailer and preferred it over exim4. The overall idea of debian-edu-fai is to 100% mimick what happens in Debian Edu Installer (aka D-I).

So, please provide a changeset for switchting from nullmailer to exim4 in d-e-fai. Thanks.

- we could configure the client rsyslog not to forward the mail facility
  but to log only locally or discard (messages would still be in the local
  journal)

As said above, the most problematic bit is a growing /var/ partition (via debian-edu-fsautoresize) which then takes up to much disk space or runs full at some point on romaing workstations / notebooks.

- we could address this problem more generally by configuring a
  rate-limit, I think this would only be practical on the client,
  rsyslog supports this

I also see a great benefit of this, please file a bug report for this. However, this needs to wait for Debian Edu 13 IMHO.

So the questions are:

Do we want to address excessive logging in general?

Yes, Debian Edu 13.

Why the inconsistency between FAI and non-FAI installations?

Good question. Please amend.

Should mail logging be local-only?

Maybe yes. Hmmm... Yes. The counter-part of it will be logged in tjener's exim4 MTA anyway. Please propose a changeset for this, as well.

Thanks, Guido!!!

Mike

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