Re: daemons -- who needs'em?
On Fri, Apr 28, 2000 at 09:45:11AM -0500, w trillich wrote
> 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...
>
$ man 5 syslog.conf
for the gory details.
> > 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).
>
hmmm, you should be able to run dselect; personally, I prefer
$ apt-cache search
$ apt-cache show
and
$ apt-get install
>[snip]
John P.
--
huiac@camtech.net.au
john@huiac.apana.org.au
http://www.mdt.net.au/~john Debian Linux admin & support:technical services
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