Well, at the very least, this behavior should be mentioned in the
Documentation as:
*) It is of great concern to SAs
*) Not an expected behavior of POSIX / F/OSS software
Page 54 of my non-devel doc PDF reads:
"Log Rotation
If you use the default bacula-dir.conf or some variation of it, you will
note that it logs all the Bacula output to a file. To avoid that this
file grows without limit, we recommend that you copy the file logrotate
from the scripts/logrotate to /etc/logrotate.d/bacula. This will cause
the log file to be rotated once a month and kept for a maximum of 5
months. You may want to edit this file to change the default log
rotation preferences."
This is fine, however logrotate.d/ is Redhat's bundle of joy. We should
load some notes for other platforms. The BSD*'s for example tend to use
newsyslog(8) and newsyslog.conf(5). I've ported both newsyslog(8) and
logrotate(8) to Solaris in the past, but I had to beg and bleed with the
Redhat people to send me the CVS version. Do HP-UX and AIX do logging?
>:}
We explicitly should mention that the log file's descriptor is only open
when being written to. No SIGHUP is needed to close and reopen it as a
new file after the existing one is renamed/compressed.
The race condition that exists here is no different than any other
system. Also, I don't see any examples of creating local[0-9] syslog(3)
facilities. Certainly an example "Messages {}" stanza that transmits
to syslogd(8) is in order. Using syslog(3) mitigates this whole
problem.
The FreeBSD port maintainer might want to add a newsyslog.conf(5)
example to the bacula-server/files/pkg-message.in:
$ grep bacu /etc/newsyslog.conf
/var/log/bacula.log bacula:bacula 660 10 * $W6D20 J
..suggesting how one might enable log rotation using Bacula internal
logging and syslog facilities:
$ grep -i bacu /etc/syslog.conf
local0.* /var/log/bacula-syslog.log
A table/chart in the User or Developer documentation that outlines how
common POSIX signals are handled would be very helpful as well. At
least the common ones in signal(3):
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=signal&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+6.1-RELEASE&format=html
- SIGHUP (normally reload config and restart jobs)
- SIGINFO (normally print a status report to log/stdout)
- SIGTERM (kill)
- SIGUSR1 (developer 1)
- SIGUSR2 (develoepr 2)
~BAS
On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 20:33 +0200, Kern Sibbald wrote:
> On Tuesday 19 September 2006 20:26, Bill Moran wrote:
> > In response to Kern Sibbald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >
> > > On Tuesday 19 September 2006 17:53, Bill Moran wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > > This is new to me. And not intuitive IMHO. Most programs interpret a
> HUP
> > > > to mean "restart gracefully". I got the impression that it would be
> about
> > > > the same as issuing "reload" from bconsole. Most daemons require a HUP
> > > > signal to tell them to close and reopen their log files. I seem to
> > > > remember reading a HOWTO that suggested hupping the director after
> > > > log rotation, but I can't find it now -- perhaps my memory is flawed.
> > >
> > > Yes, you are right, I was confusing a SIGHUP with a SIGTERM.
> > >
> > > SIGHUPing Bacula is never a very good idea. Depending on what version of
> > > Bacula it is, it will most likely crash. If I am not mistaken, so far
> there
> > > are no reported crashes against version 1.38.11.
> >
> > Well, that still tells me what to do to make the the problem go away,
> although
> > you can consider this a report of lockup when sending the director a HUP ;)
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > > Personally, I find the director's handling of HUP atypical by comparison
> > > > to other Unix daemons. From the docs, it's not clear whether the
> > > > director requires a signal to tell it to start logging to a new file,
> > > > I'm assuming (since HUP is a bad idea) that it does not?
> > >
> > > If you are talking about cycling a Job report log file as defined in the
> > > Messages resource, then there is probably no need to SIGHUP Bacula as it
> > > opens and closes the log file on a Job by Job basis, if I am not mistaken.
> >
> > That's what I meant. Although I'm still a bit concerned. What happens if
> the
> > log file is rotated while a job is in progress? Will bacula attempt to
> append
> > to the end of (the now compressed) previously opened file descriptor? Or
> will
> > it reconnect to the new file with the correct filename.
>
> No, that is what Windows probably does. On Unix/Linux systems, Bacula
> continues writing to the old file and when Bacula releases the file, it is
> deleted. Thus you lose the last part of what Bacula is writing if you delete
> it out from under Bacula.
>
> >
> > Job reports split between two log files is an annoyance, but not terrible.
> > Corruption of old log data would be worse.
>
> No data gets corrupted, but potentially some could be lost.
>
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > Yes, even if I did mistake SIGHUP and SIGTERM, it is not a good idea to
> SIGHUP
> > > Bacula.
> >
> > I've adjusted the newsyslog config. Thanks for the feedback, as always.
> >
> > --
> > Bill Moran
> > Collaborative Fusion Inc.
> >
> > ****************************************************************
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>
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Brian A. Seklecki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Collaborative Fusion, Inc.
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