i have set my /var/log to be on tmpfs (i have ssd and want to avoid logs being written on it). the problem is, that for example syslogd complains that /var/log/news/* files are missing. indeed, there is no news subdirectory in /var/log. the same applies, e.g., to apt (/var/log/apt/...) - so what would be the correct procedure in this case?
well, that would certainly be an option... but actually, having temporary logs in /var/log can be useful sometimes. my machine has enough memory, so few megabytes taken up by /var/log do not make that much of a difference.If you do not care at all about the logs there may even be a way to write them to /dev/null. This would free up the memory.
for the syslog case, i just modified the syslog.conf to write the 'news' messages directly to /var/log. at the moment, i have bigger problem with apt. i don't see any way how to change the location of the apt logs (it wants to write to /var/log/apt/*) - it doesn't prevent apt and aptitude running, but the error message/warning i am getting in aptitude is sort of annoying. the solution might be to create the directory during the boot, but if there's an config option to apt controlling this behavior, it would be wiser to use it.
i think the problem is that you cannot say at one place 'put all logs to dev/null'. but maybe there really is somebody who could advice how to do this.However if it is possible i might want to do this on my EeePC, for it has only limited hdd space. I am willing to try this on my EeePC this weekend, for it would help me if it would work.
best, -- Lubos _@_" http://www.lubos.vrbka.net