Add option -Z to syslogd(8) to use ISO 8601 timestamps

[Ed Schouten]

Hi Ben,

2018-04-02 12:22 GMT+02:00 Ben Woods <woodsb02 at gmail.com>:
> That is a coincidence. Having looked through your code, I realise it is far
> better than mine, and mine actually resulted in the syslogd output being
> non-compliant with both RFC3164 and RFC5424 (by using the RFC5424 timestamp
> format with the remainder of the log matching the RFC3164 format). I have
> therefore abandoned my review in favour of yours.
>
> My effort has not been wasted though, as it meant that I was recently
> familiar with the syslogd.c code, and the contents of RFC3164 and RFC5424,
> and therefore had a headstart in reviewing your patch. I have provided some
> comments in phabricator for your consideration.

Yes, exactly! Having someone who can review my changes thoroughly is
incredibly useful. Thanks a lot for your feedback so far! I'll take a
look at it later today and revise my patch where needed.

> I think you have already handled the hard part of the migration to RFC5424,
> which is the updated parsing logic. Whilst you have yet changed the log
> output format to RFC5424, I suspect that will be the easy bit.

Exactly. We do have to investigate whether we also want to use RFC
5424 to format console messages. It may be a bit too verbose,
especially for 80 column consoles. This is exactly why I left changing
the output format to another change.

> When it comes time to change the output format, it is worth noting that
> NetBSD has provided the "-o" syslogd argument to allow the sysadmin to
> select the output format:
>
>  -o output_format
>                   Select output message format.
>                   bsd, rfc3164 traditional BSD Syslog format (default)
>                   syslog, rfc5424 new syslog-protocol format

Yes! Being compatible with NetBSD here sounds like a good idea indeed.
No need to deviate unnecessarily.

Best regards,
-- 
Ed Schouten <ed at nuxi.nl>
Nuxi, 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands