Arch Linux

4rty

Member

Registered: 2021-04-16

Posts: 12

Conflicting info in syslog-ng wiki

Hey this is pretty minor but i wanted to point it out because I spent way more time than I'd like to admit trying to figure this out.
I was just reading through the syslog-ng wiki and there seems to be contradicting info between sections or at least that's how i'm interpreting it.

Section 2.1 systemd/journald integration says :
Keeping ForwardToSyslog=no in /etc/systemd/journald.conf is recommended in order to avoid the overhead associated with the socket and to avoid needless error messages in the log.

But then section 3.1 syslog-ng and systemd journal says
If you wish to use both the journald and syslog-ng, ensure the ... settings ... ForwardToSyslog= set to yes.

So from my understanding unless you are setting Storage=none in /etc/systemd/journald.conf , ForwardToSyslog should always be no because syslog-ng follows the 'journald' journal file as per section 2.1, so I'm not sure why section 3.1 says  to use ForwardToSyslog=yes ,  is there a case where you would like to use ForwardToSyslog=yes when Storage is set to something other than none?

lahwaacz

Wiki Admin

From: Czech Republic

Registered: 2012-05-29

Posts: 760

Re: Conflicting info in syslog-ng wiki

Feel free to mark the relevant section(s) with https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Template:Accuracy

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 12,794

Re: Conflicting info in syslog-ng wiki

is there a case where you would like to use ForwardToSyslog=yes when Storage is set to something other than none?

Yes.

systemd-journald sends new messages to syslog .
syslog-ng stores them as text
systemd-journald stores the messages in binary format only accessible through itself

A severe crash happens which halts everything

Upon (re-) boot the journald binary storage for the previous boot is found to be corrupt and unreadable.
The syslog-ng logfiles are plain text, usable and have info useful for troubleshooting IF you have ForwardToSyslog = yes

It doesn't happen often, but the impact can be huge when it does.

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky