Bug#531854: Please have cron only notify if paniclog has new entries

[Anthony DeRobertis]

Package: exim4
Version: 4.69-11
Severity: wishlist

It seems that exim emails me every morning if paniclog is of non-zero
size. But that log seems to be rotated very infrequently (there isn't a
rotation interval in /etc/logrotate.d/exim4-paniclog and it seems like
it didn't do it weekly or monthly, so maybe only when it reaches 10M), so
even after fixing the issue I still keep getting daily messages.

So, ultimately, I just wind up doing an echo -n > /var/log/exim4/paniclog
but that has the unfortunate effect of destroying the logged data.

It'd be much nicer if the algorithm was "non-zero size AND different
than yesterday's size." (Different, not greater than, to handle log
rotation). Or, alternatively, "non-zero size AND mtime in last 24h." 


Example message:

    exim paniclog /var/log/exim4/paniclog on Tao.metrics.net has non-zero size, mail system might be broken. The last 10 lines are quoted below.
    
    2009-05-22 07:02:06 Exim configuration error in line 786 of /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated:
      user otrs was not found
    2009-05-22 07:02:06 Exim configuration error in line 786 of /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated:
      user otrs was not found
    2009-05-22 09:02:06 Exim configuration error in line 786 of /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated:
      user otrs was not found
    2009-05-22 09:02:06 Exim configuration error in line 786 of /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated:
      user otrs was not found
    2009-05-22 09:47:58 Exim configuration error in line 786 of /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp:
      user otrs was not found

-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.69 #1 built 10-May-2009 08:22:44
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2006
Berkeley DB: Berkeley DB 4.6.21: (September 27, 2007)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 GnuTLS move_frozen_messages
Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz dnsdb dsearch nis nis0 passwd
Authenticators: cram_md5 plaintext
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (100, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages exim4 depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]         1.5.26     Debian configuration management sy
ii  exim4-base                    4.69-11    support files for all Exim MTA (v4
ii  exim4-daemon-light            4.69-11    lightweight Exim MTA (v4) daemon

exim4 recommends no packages.

exim4 suggests no packages.

-- debconf information excluded