[syslog-ng] Failure to source one file prevents entire syslog-ng logger from running

[Hari Sekhon]

Hi,

   While I was away on holiday, another sysadmin changed the path of a 
3rd party application logfile that I was I sourcing in syslog-ng (it 
cannot log directly to syslog). This caused the whole syslog-ng logger 
to basically fail to work/(re)start, giving an the error:

Starting syslog-ng: Persistent configuration file is in invalid format, 
ignoring;
Error opening file for reading; filename='/path/to/file.log', error='No 
such file or directory (2)'
Error initializing source driver; source='s_file_blah'

And auto-restarting the logger of course didn't work either since every 
time a restart is initiated the thing simply bailed out with this error.

Shouldn't this error simply throw up a warning and continue logging the 
rest of what's happening on the system, rather than leaving a hole in 
the audit trail because it cannot lock in one source???
(Even better: start regardless, do what it can and then periodically 
check the source again, and every time it cannot get the source open, 
log a warning in syslog so that it can be caught by the monitoring 
infrastructure)

Any suggestions for a workaround/option to prevent anything like this 
ever happening again in future would be welcome.

-h

-- 
Hari Sekhon
Always open to interesting opportunities
http://www.linkedin.com/in/harisekhon