No SYSLOG No Mail Scanned

[Glenn Steen]

On 05/04/06, Res <res at ausics.net> wrote:
> Is it correct that should syslog die that MS ceases to process mail????
> should it not continue on, on such a trivial error state?
>
> Current version MS, all MS process defunct, I know it was working two
> nights ago... Anyway after scratching my head for 10 mins i threw it into
> debug mode and the problem was instantly evident, cant connect to syslog.
>
> OK so it brought to my notice syslog died on our secondary MX :) but none
> the less I think it's bad that it just queues the mail and dies off this
> way.
>
>
> --
> Cheers
> Res

That's one of the classics.... What to do when logging dies on you:
Create another log entry to that effect?
An <unmentionable> system/program I used to work with c:a 15 years ago
had this "nifty" feature of logging a trace continually, and going
into "verbose mode" once a problem was detected... Imagine the idiocy
by which one of the "programmers" made the logging be extra verbose on
a full disk condition (for the hdd/partition the log file resided on,
no less).
That was obviously the wrong thing to do:-).
So what do you expect MS to do? Just blithely move on? I'm not sure
that's a good idea... As it is, you a) notice that mail has "stopped
flowing", and b) can rather trivially discover why.

What made syslog die? There are a fair amount of things depending on
syslog being there, apart from MS:-).

--
-- Glenn
email: glenn < dot > steen < at > gmail < dot > com
work: glenn < dot > steen < at > ap1 < dot > se