Improving Syslog

[Robert Noland]

On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 12:41 -0400, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
> On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 12:21 PM, Robert Watson <rwatson at freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> >
> > This sounds like an exciting project -- while I recognize the concerns
> > other have expressed about complexity, I think that complexity can be
> > managed if done carefully.  I'm not sure if you've looked at Apple's
> > extended syslog, which among other things, includes a binary log file format
> > making it more mechanically searched and managed, do take a look if you
> > haven't.
> 
> 
> ... and I'm not just saying this to be ornery, but what about test log file
> formats is not mechanically searchable? Note that I'm not playing the XML
> card here (I'm not an XML fan) but the only real draw of a binary format (to
> me) is a small amount of innate compression (numbers and dates in binary
> form) and the ability to have field separators that are not part of the
> printable character set.  UN*X has a strong tradition of text files that
> work around these two limitations in a variety of ways --- and UN*X tools
> are built with these assumptions.  There's a strong set of reasons to
> consider retaining text formats and continuing to improve our tools around
> them.

I don't think anyone has suggested replacing text with a binary format.
Just providing an alternative for those who choose to use it.

robert.

> One way to strengthen the syslog format is to have syslog enforce a format
> _and_ enforce that whatever field separator is chosen cannot be written
> within a field.
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