Mailing List Archive: Feature Request: Advanced Logging

Feature Request: Advanced Logging

Sep 17, 2008, 8:55 AM

Post #1 of 3 (1314 views)

Hello developers!

I want to ask for a feature many people would need in near future:

PROBLEM:
I have to implement some kind of logging to fulfil the law about data
retention beginning on 01.01.2009. I could code a solution which pharses the
mainlog using regexp. This has some disadvantages:
- Problems with log rotating
- the regexp must be tested very well to log any mail incoming/outgoing - no
matter how the log line looks like. but it should not log other lines to
save disk space. That will be hard.

IDEA:
Extend/Implement a logging engine where someone can define:
* multiple logfiles which include...
* different log levels / different events which are logged

This way I could have a normal mainlog/rejectlog PLUS an adiddional logfile
which only contains the data needed for data retention.

There are also other things this could be useful for:
* Virtual hosting: a logfile for each domain e.g.
* a verbose debug log which could be turned on by simply uncommenting some
config lines
* ...

Is someone interested in implementing it? I cannot code it because I do not
have the time to start digging in the exim code.
But I CAN help with testing and documentation.

Greetings, yours

--
Florian Lagg
-
Florian Lagg - IT-Komplettlösungen
Juch 7, 6631 Lermoos
tel +43 (699) 10 20 10 24
<http://www.lagg.at/> www.lagg.at - <mailto:info@lagg.at> info@lagg.at
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Xing: <http://www.xing.com/go/invite/7372113.3da562>
http://www.xing.com/go/invite/7372113.3da562
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Feature Request: Advanced Logging [ In reply to ]

info at lagg

Sep 17, 2008, 8:53 AM

Post #2 of 3 (1195 views)

Permalink

Re: Feature Request: Advanced Logging [ In reply to ]

exim-dev+pdp at spodhuis

Sep 17, 2008, 1:02 PM

Post #3 of 3 (1199 views)

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On 2008-09-17 at 17:55 +0200, Florian Lagg wrote:
> PROBLEM:
> I have to implement some kind of logging to fulfil the law about data
> retention beginning on 01.01.2009. I could code a solution which pharses the
> mainlog using regexp. This has some disadvantages:
> - Problems with log rotating

Embed the date in Exim's logfile names and do the compression yourself,
on suitably old files.

log_file_path = /var/log/exim/%slog-%D

There's something in the src/EDITME (aka Local/Makefile) file about
this.

> - the regexp must be tested very well to log any mail incoming/outgoing - no
> matter how the log line looks like. but it should not log other lines to
> save disk space. That will be hard.

Not that hard, since Exim clearly defines, in the documentation, what
the log lines look like and which options affect them.

exigrep is a utility bundled with Exim which shows some of what can be
done.

> Is someone interested in implementing it? I cannot code it because I do not
> have the time to start digging in the exim code.
> But I CAN help with testing and documentation.

Someone else might be interested; myself, I'd be more inclined, if doing
this, to ask for a precise specification of exactly what data is to be
retained and then provide a exilogcompact script with Exim as a
demonstration of parsing the logfiles and producing something more
condensed. And modify exicyclog to optionally (depending upon
Local/Makefile) call that script to generate the longer-term retention
logfile before compressing away the one it's looking at now.

Given a specification to work to, I might be willing to write/modify the
script(s) to handle this.

-Phil

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