Bug#1084924: The system-log-daemon virtual package

Sean Whitton <[email protected]> Thu, 14 Nov 2024 10:16:15 +0800

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.ctte
Message-ID	<87iksqd0gg.fsf__11412.6492918999$1731550726$gmane$org@melete.silentflame.com>

Hello,

On Fri 08 Nov 2024 at 06:38pm +01, Christoph Berg wrote:

> Re: Matthew Vernon
>> The maintainer is saying that "in all but unusual installations" a
>> system-log-daemon would be found installed alongside hippotat-server.
>
> I'm inclined to say logging should be a system facility and nothing
> that a "normal" package should depend on. Then if I *don't* want
> logging, I could just remove that facility and even installing
> packages that would usually use logging wouldn't pull it back in.
>
> The expectation would be that debian-installer would set up logging in
> normal cases. Same for containers etc.

I struggle to see why logging is special, in this case.

Why isn't an MTA a system facility?  Well, because many many systems
don't need an MTA at all.

And similarly, others might not want a standard logging facility,
because they do something else to record their work, or specifically
don't want to (some simple appliance).

> Packages should only depend on logging (system-log-daemon or whatever
> incantation) if they specifically do something with logging, like
> fail2ban and the like.

I think *reading* logs is something else entirely.  That's highly log
daemon-dependent: depending on system-log-daemon doesn't enable fail2ban
to know where to look for the logs.

-- 
Sean Whitton

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