Bug#775447: Does not update or remove /var/log/dmesg

[Ben Hutchings]

On Thu, 2015-01-15 at 22:58 +0100, Michael Biebl wrote:
> Hi Ben,
> 
> Am 15.01.2015 um 20:41 schrieb Ben Hutchings:
> > Since I switched to systemd as pid 1, /var/log/dmesg is no longer
> > updated.  I realise that it is not really needed because systemd
> > captures kernel messages and feeds them to the syslog daemon via
> > journald.

Actually, now that I think about it, at least rsyslog can write the
kernel boot messages to syslog by itself.  I think /var/log/dmesg is
redundant even with initscripts.

> > However, /var/log/dmesg is not removed either, and it took me a
> > little while to realise that I was looking at stale information
> > from the last initscripts boot.
> > 
> > Please arrange to either update or remove it when systemd is pid 1.
> 
> I don't think we want to update /var/log/dmesg under systemd. As you
> said, we have a much more elaborate solution with the journal.
> 
> I also feel a bit uneasy about removing /var/log/dmesg within the
> systemd package (either in the maintainer scripts or by other means),
> since this log file is not owned by systemd. I'm pretty sure we would
> get angry mails from admins if we removed their log files.
>
> We could maybe think about renaming /var/log/dmesg to something like
> /var/log/dmesg-better-name-to-be-found.

I forgot that multiple versions of /var/log/dmesg are saved.  Looking at
what /etc/init.d/bootlogs does, I think maybe the best thing to do is to
rotate the old logs with the savelog command so there is no current
version.

> Then again, if someone boots again with sysvinit (via the
> /lib/sysvinit/init fallback), this file would be re-created. So this
> wouldn't be a complete solution either.
> 
> Maybe the simplest solution is, to simply document this fact somewhere
> (README.Debian, release notes, something else), along with other
> sysvinit compat issues.

Yes please.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
The world is coming to an end.	Please log off.
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