[syslog-ng] [patch] new feature for file destination: persistent symlinks

[Evan Rempel]

Perhaps the symbolic link name can also permit macros, so for a 
destination that is partially time based and host/program based you can 
have a specific symlink.

For example:

Destination name $HOST.$YEAR.$MONTH.$DAY.$HOUR
Symblic link       $HOST.latest

Just thinking out loud.

Evan

On 2021-12-05 08:49, Gabor Nagy (gnagy) wrote:
>
> Hello Andrea!
>
> Thank you for your contribution! We always welcome feedback and 
> contribution from the community!
>
> I've quickly checked your patch, and it looks good. Maybe minor things 
> could be changed, but we will see this during a thorough review.
>
> We integrate patches via pull requests on GitHub. [1]
> How would you like to continue this contribution?
> Would you like to open a pull request on GitHub?
>
> I see a corner case of the feature: if the filename template is not 
> time-based, like e.g. $PROGRAM or $HOST, it can happen that the 
> symlink is changed several times in a short time.
> This is not an argument against the feature, it's just a behaviour 
> that should be considered and documented.
> As I see, the feature in general creates a symlink with the name given 
> in "symlink_as" option when a new file is opened.
> In other words: the configured symlink always points to the latest 
> file that were opened.
>
>
> Best Regards,
> Gábor
>
> [1] https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* syslog-ng <syslog-ng-bounces at lists.balabit.hu> on behalf of 
> a.biardi at tiscali.it <a.biardi at tiscali.it>
> *Sent:* Saturday, December 4, 2021 15:29
> *To:* syslog-ng at lists.balabit.hu <syslog-ng at lists.balabit.hu>
> *Subject:* [syslog-ng] [patch] new feature for file destination: 
> persistent symlinks
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>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm new here. I love syslog-ng: it's well written and documented and
> each time I need some new feature, I dig up the documentation and I
> find it's already implemented!
>
> Like many others, I use macros in file destinations (say,
> "/var/log/cron.${YEAR}${MONTH}"), but I also want to maintain a
> persistent symlink to the current logfile (that would be
> something like "/var/log/cron") in order to have "easier" access if I'm
> grepping for something manually.
>
> I couldn't find this feature in syslog-ng, so I wrote the code myself;
> in the configuration file, it looks like this:
>
> destination d_file_cron {
>   file("/var/log/cron.${YEAR}${MONTH}" symlink_as("/var/log/cron"));
> };
>
> It works for me on my Slackware boxes. I'm sharing the patch I put
> together, hoping that it may be useful to others and perhaps even
> considered for inclusion in mainstream.
>
> From a functional perspective, the "symlink_as" file inherits both
> "create-dirs" and file ownership from its file destination (permissions
> are not applicable to symlinks, at least on linux).
>
> Patch applies cleanly to latest production release (3.33). I tried to
> keep the original coding style for easier review (admittedly, the code
> could have gone into the function that opens the file destination, but
> I didn't want to change too much).
>
> Thanks for the good work and happy logging!
>
> Andrea.
>
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