Re: Bug report: rsyslog 8.2212.0-1~bpo11+1 changes syslog date format, breaks logging to /var/log/messages

On Thu, 23 Feb 2023 at 18:39 Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Feb 2023 at 15:59:13 +0000, Christian Hoffmann wrote:
>> the package upgrade from rsyslog package
>> version 8.2208.0-1~bpo11+1 to 8.2212.0-1~bpo11+1 has changed the date and
>> time format of syslog entries
> According to the changelog, that was an intentional change, switching
> to the upstream default logging format (see also
> <https://bugs.debian.org/475303>).
>
>> and there's no further logging to /var/log/messages
> According to the changelog, that was an intentional change, to
> close <https://bugs.debian.org/580552>. /var/log/messages was always
> somewhat misleading, because it received medium-priority messages but
> not high-priority messages, which seems like an odd thing to want. Making
> it more comprehensive would have made it a duplicate of /var/log/syslog.
>
> As far as I understand backports policy, it wouldn't necessarily be
> considered valid for the maintainer of a rsyslog backport to revert
> those changes: we don't have a way to get backports of new upstream
> versions without also getting any behaviour changes that came along
> with them.
>
>      smcv
>      (neither the maintainer of rsyslog nor the maintainer of its backport)

Thank you very much for this context and the links, Simon. In 
retrospect, I think I've failed to link the term (RFC 3339) "high 
precision timestamps" in Michael Biebl's changelog for rsyslog 
8.2210.0-3 to the changed time / date format of the syslog entries. Your 
comments have now made the background of that behavior clear to me.

Thanks a lot

Christian