Linux: concerns over systemd [OT]

Thu Oct 23 18:33:01 UTC 2014

Going way off topic but what's still a disaster in log files is the
lack of standardization of output.

As another extreme OS/370 catalogued virtually (hah) every error msg,
if you thought you had a new one you added it to the catalogue as you
added it to an error msg in your program and it was likely someone
informed you something sufficient already existed, or you just
specialized an existing code -- e.g., IED101203EA77... might mean
daemon, file system problem, insufficient privilege,
recoverable/unrecoverable, etc and then you could add a few more
digits (...) to make it unique if you liked or use a known value and
some free format text as per usual if desired.

System/Kernel/Library wide.

I realize there have been a few very weak attempts at this with *ix
like errno, strerror (which for some bizarre reason never prints the
errno or symbolic error only some text albeit from a known table),
sysexits.h, %m in syslog which is just strerror(), etc.

But syslog et al needs to go way beyond the daemon, time, and priority
and free format text so log analyzers (including grep) have half a
chance.

Just my 2c.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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