🚀 go-pugleaf

In an article, Dale Chayes writes:
> I'm (almost) sure that there is an RFC documenting the syslog protocol.
> 
> [Actually, this is no RFC about syslog. It is a BSDism. It is very simple
> as some have said. There is a "fake" version included with nntp. I think there
> is also a real version (for System V like machines) in the comp.sources.unix
> or comp.sources.misc archives on uunet. -- sob]

There is, of course, no RFC on syslog.  Not only is the "protocol" simple,
but the implementation is readily available.  I.e., from uunet:

/usr/spool/ftp/bsd-sources/usr.sbin/syslogd:
total 34
-r--r--r--  1 archive     25042 Jun 29  1990 syslogd.c
-r--r--r--  1 archive       169 Jun 29  1990 Makefile
-r--r--r--  1 archive      5247 Jun 27  1990 syslogd.8
-r--r--r--  1 archive      1216 Jun  1  1990 pathnames.h

This is the 4.3-reno version, and with a few changes it should work under
RTU.  Minor other work would be required to make a libsyslog.a and the
user-level "logger" program.

Of course, this wouldn't give you support of the BSD-like /dev/klog, and
I'm not (personally) sure how RTU's /dev/log and /dev/klog work.  I'm not
sure why syslog isn't supported under RTU, other than there just hasn't been
someone to do the work.  This is really almost "just an afternoons" effort.

Syslog is not always the best mechanism for things.  Messages can get lost
and all that other nonsense as to why it's not a good solution.  Never-the-
less, it does a good 80% of the job and it's there for free.  It was actually
long ago at another company that didn't provide a reasonable syslog that I
cleaned up NNTP's "fake" version to work exactly like the 4.3 version of
syslog.  That was, of course, before syslog was freely redistributable.

All of this is of course completely my own opinion.

John
-- 
John Robert LoVerso, Concurrent Computer Corp, loverso@westford.ccur.com
[to reach ME, not the corporate puppet: john@loverso.leom.ma.us]

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