Re: daemons -- who needs'em?
Joey Hess wrote:
>
> w trillich wrote:
> > > > we need them _both_ because... well... um...
> > > Because syslogd handles the userspace messages, klogd handles the kernel
> > > messages.
> >
> > there's still a AWFUL lot of overlap!
>
> No there's not. Please give the people who wrote linux some credit for
> sense.
i saved the output from
tail -50 /var/log/syslog
tail -50 /var/log/daemon.log
and did a 'diff' on them: of fifty lines, there were only 8 sections
needing an edit: 1 delete (11 lines) and 7 adds, affecting a total
of eleven differing lines between the two logs; (50-11)/50 = 78%
overlap.
i think the linux folk are absolutely amazing, nonetheless. i used
to have visions of coding grandeur... but now i sit back and gape
at how even microsloth trembles at what linux can do.
i merely think i have a screwy setting here or there that's
needlessly duplicating log messages. settings are the bane of
my linux existence, still...
> klogd contains a lot of speical-purpose code to parse System.map files
> and decode kernel symbols and grab information out of the kernel ring
> buffer. This is _not_ stuff you want in a general syslogd program, especially
> since there is little reason a syslogd program should not be portable.
> Therefore, it makes excellent sense to make it be in its own daemon. Which
> just passes log messages on to syslogd, so there is no code overlap.
my bad. i didn't mean _code_ redundancy (heavens! did you think i was
accusing linus of generating microsquish code?) but rather log-output
redundancy...
> Given the list you posted, you seem to have installed a great deal of
> daemons onto your debian system without knowing what they do. That is
> not a good idea. It's the type of thing redhat people seem to do, but in
> debian there is no point in doing so. Install a minimal system, add
> daemons and other packages one at a time as you find the need for them.
i started all this debian stuff about a month ago from the 2.1 cd,
merely following on-screen prompts and installing as little as i could
(debian cd installs a micro-set of stuff from which you reboot;
instead of
a shell, you're dumped into a 'select what you intend to use this computer
for' interface [workstation/xwindows? or web/file server?] and then
after lengthy installs, the subsequent reboot appears to have removed
the selector utility so that you CAN'T add more stuff en masse... or at
least a newbie surely couldn't).
based on my infinitesimal knowledge of commands and facilities at
the time, i learned from 'man' and localhost/doc that 'alien' would
handle rpm files, and 'dpkg' would install them. thanks to this list
i found out that those methods have been steamrollered by the more
powerful apt-get method.
your philosophy is also mine--install diddly and add what you need--
the gap between us is a hefty base of knowledge, which is why i get
to bug you folks about this kind of thing: you got it, i'm gettin' it.
:)
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