Hi, The goal should be to make it easier for operators to manage their networks, not to make it easier for protocol designers to design protocols.
I believe we should move to UTF-8 to allow operators who speak languages other than ASCII-based characters to be able to get non-ASCII syslog messages. Other management protocols are also using UTF-8, so vendors are already moving in that direction, and syslog should do so as well. Since ASCII is a subset of UTF-8, those systems that currently only generate ASCII should have no problem. Those receivers that only know how to process ASCII should learn how to process UTF-8, or filter out the non-ASCII themselves. In the long-term view, sooner or later, the IETF really needs to start designing their management protocols to be somewhat interoperable. We need to adopt common character set support for syslog, snmp, netconf, etc. We should be trying to develop information models that are consistent, and data models that consistent where possible. Without a strong effort to make our protocols consistent, we will never be able to develop security for our management interfaces that make sense across the interfaces. Management protocols overlap in what they are good at; no management protocol is good for every task. We should be designing our protocols so they can share information. Having syslog only understand ASCII makes integration with other management protocols much more difficult. Syslog should use UTF-8. dbh > -----Original Message----- > From: Rainer Gerhards [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 12:40 PM > To: Anton Okmianski; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: -international: trailer > > I would like to continue this discussion. I have listed it as > issue #9. > For past dicussion milestones, please visit > > http://www.syslog.cc/ietf/protocol/issue9.html > > This issue is of vital importance for the message format and thus > -protocol. I would like to settle it as quickly as possible, as some > other discussions can only be carried forward when this issue here is > solved. > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Anton Okmianski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 11:25 PM > > > Can we just allow any ASCII control characters and any UTF-8 encoded > > characters and leave it up to a different standard to define > > the storage > > format? > > Though this sounds fair, I have the feeling that it does not > work really > well for syslog. The reason is that syslog traditionally was printable > text (no control character) only (at least for the most part). This is > also in RFC 3195. Even more important is that syslog-sign depends on > printable characters, or better said on an equal on-the-wire and > on-storage representation. Otherwise, signatures will no longer be > useful. Of course, we could redefine -sign (it is not > finished yet), but > I have the strong feeling that we are actually fiddling with a > fundamental syslog philosophy issue. We already went a long way from > syslog as it is currently defined and in use. I think we must > be careful > that we do not define something that is totally different to current > syslog (and yields us a lot of acceptance issues...). > > In short: I have a strong peferrence that we should insist on > non-nontrol-chars only. Escaping MUST be done by the > (original) sender. > > What does the rest of the group think? > > > I think storage format must be standardized soon, but it is > > out of scope > > for -protocol, right? People will be looking to -protocol and try to > > infer the log file format so they can process messages. We > > should make > > it clear in -protocol that syslog servers are free to store > > messages in > > whatever format they choose > > I am about to mandate that they MUST implement a way to store raw > message data - for signed messages. Again, if we don't > mandate this, we > have a fundamental issue with syslog-sign. And, yes, I found out about > the big scope of this issue when I began to think about implementing a > signature verifier for -sign ;) > > In the light of this, what does the WG think? > > Rainer > > >
