[OpenAFS] Proposed changes for server log rotation

[Derrick Brashear]

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 3:28 PM, David R Boldt <dboldt@usgs.gov> wrote:
>
>> I've been been recently working on changes to improve how the server
>> logs are handled to make it more straightforward to use commonly
>> used tools for log rotation (like logrotate) out of the box. I'd
>> like to solicit some comments on the subject.
>>
>> Currently, the when doing file-based logging, the servers create a
>> new log file on each restart. The current log is renamed to a file
>> with a extension of .old. The existing .old file is overwritten. In
>> older versions, by default, the server processes were restarted
>> weekly, so this made for a rudimentary log rotation. (There is no
>> check on size or time on the .old file when the server restarts, so
>> one annoying outcome is you can lose log information in the case a
>> server process is restarted or crashes back to back.)
>>
>> I propose in some future release of openafs this behavior be
>> deprecated and, by default, the server would simply append to the
>> already existing log file on startup. Also, each server would handle
>> the HUP signal to (at least) reopen the log file when it is rotated
>> by an external tool such as logrotate. A .pid file for each server
>> process would be created to allow the log rotate tool to signal the
>> server processes to reopen log files after rotating the log files.
>>
>> The old behavior of renaming the logs at startup, deleting the
>> existing .old file, would be available as a run-time option. Sites
>> would be able to set this option as a command line switch for the
>> server programs, and set bosserver to do weekly restarts (which, by
>> the way, is no longer the default in the upcoming 1.6.x series).
>
> If the wish list is open, the ability to log to a pipe so that one could use
> a tool such a cronolog would be convenient for us.

that's such a short wishlist that it was done in 2008 or so.

-- 
Derrick