[syslog-ng] syslog-ng 3.1.2 - Changing location of syslog-ng.pid file causes problems

[Gergely Nagy]

Zeek Anow <zeekstern at gmail.com> writes:

> We are running Solaris 10 Update 9, syslog-ng 3.1.2 - version details
> at bottom of this msg.
>
> I wanted the syslog-ng.pid file to be located in swap so it would be
> cleared after a reboot. 
> I also did not like the idea of creating the /usr/local/var/run
> directories, so:
>
> I modified the /lib/svc/method file and then validated and imported
> the syslog-ng.xml file.
> I stopped/disabled the syslog-ng process to make this change.
>
> So now, I have 3 problems, but syslog-ng is running, and I can't
> imagine how:)).
>
> 1. I cannot find the 2 files syslog-ng.pid or syslog-ng.ctl files
> anywhere on the system.
>    I did a global find which searches the entire disk.
>
> 2. When syslog-ng started up, I got the following msg, and it is true:
>  Error opening control socket, bind() failed; socket='/usr/local/var/syslog-
> ng.ctl', error='No such file or directory.
>
> 3. Before I made the change, a ps was showing:
> root  5769     1     7     7   0   Apr 21 ?           0:00
> /usr/local/sbin/syslog-ng
> root  5770  5769  5770  5770  13   Apr 21 ?        5618:33
> /usr/local/sbin/syslog-ng
>
> cat /usr/local/var/syslog-ng.pid
> 5770
>
> As you can see, the PID is 5770. Shouldn't that be 5769??

The problem is, according to the error message you quoted above, is that
syslog-ng is trying to put its pidfile and the control socket to the
location that was specified at build time.

To override that, you can change the method file to actually pass the
$PIDFILE to syslog-ng. It seems to me, that it doesn't do that, and only
uses the PIDFILE option for itself.

If you change the syslog-ng invocation in that method file to run
syslog-ng with the -p $PIDFILE and -c /path/to/syslog-ng.ctl parameters,
that should do the trick.

If you're using the method file that comes with syslog-ng, then if you
add the two parameters I mentioned earlier to the OPTIONS variable, that
should do just what you want.

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