Bug#391892: exim4-base: combination of logrotate file and cron.d file result in spurious warning mails

[Marc Haber]

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 02:54:42PM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote:
> This one time, at band camp, Marc Haber said:
> > On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 01:14:59PM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote:
> > > 
> > > I manually fixed the syntax error, reload exim, move on.
> > 
> > Mistake here. Rotate panicloc is missing. The paniclog should always
> > be empty, and if it's not, that is alarm signal. Upstream docs suggest
> > this mode of operation.
> 
> You mean you expect admins to manually do:
> rm /var/log/exim4/pancilog.100.gz
> mv /var/log/exim4/pancilog.99.gz /var/log/exim4/pancilog.100.gz
> mv /var/log/exim4/pancilog.98.gz /var/log/exim4/pancilog.99.gz
> ....

One can simply use savelog, or, in a more easy case mv
/var/log/exim4/paniclog /var/log/exim4/paniclog-20061009.

> > That's a side effect and cannot be relied on. Additionally, it would
> > only send a _single_ e-mail.
> 
> This is also the case when paniclog is greater than 10M in size.  I am
> arguing that if you handle rotation at all, it should be consistent.
> The argument that you want to alert for all eternity, unless the log
> file gets too big, doesn't feel consistent to me.

Keeping the system up and running is more important than sending out
the mail message warning in all cases.

> I do to, but that's why I add paniclog to logcheck.  I prefer the single
> problem, single alert method of handling things.  If it's an ongoing
> problem that continues to write to paniclog, I want to continue to
> be notified.  But I really don't want a hundred emails every morning
> for a problem I already fixed on all the affected machines.

set E4BCD_WATCH_PANICLOG="no" in /etc/default/exim4.

Greetings
Marc

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