[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#205724: Recent bootlogd work

[Thomas Hood]

Re: #205724: "bootlogd's fsyncing slows second fsck way down"
I have prepared a dpatch for the bootlogd program which causes it not to fsync
after every line unless the "-s" option is given.  Thus the new default is _not_
to sync after every line.  This should make the system boot faster when bootlogd
is running, especially when a filesystem has to be checked: no fsync each time
fsck updates the progress bar.  (No I haven't run any benchmarks---I am trusting
the judgment of the submitter of #205724.)  Although this increases the risk of
losing some log information, it's still possible to add the "-s" option for
debugging purposes.

Re: #341167: "bootlogd doesn't wait for /var/log to be mounted"
I have prepared another dpatch for bootlogd which causes it not to open the
log file if the log file doesn't exist.  This effectively makes the log file a
flag file which means "OK to write the log file".  Thus on systems where
/var/log is a mount point, the admin just makes sure that there is no "boot"
file under the mount point /var/log; then bootlogd will wait for the filesystem
to be mounted, will see the "boot" file on the mounted filesystem (initscript
postinst creates the file) and start writing to it.  Other solutions to #341167
are imaginable, but this seems like a simple and adequate solution.

#348506: "Please support use of ttyB* on hppa"
I prepared another dpatch to make bootlogd try to open ttyB* too.

Comments welcome as always.

Related note while we're talking about bootlogd...

> sysvinit (2.86.ds1-6ubuntu3) dapper; urgency=low
> 
>   * Drop S18bootlogd from the ordinary boot process; it needs a writable
>     /var/log and access to /dev/pts which means it would have to start so
>     late that there'd be nothing worth logging.  Nobody can ever remember
>     this working in Ubuntu, and nobody's sure it even can work with usplash.
>     Everything's still shipped, so those who want it can figure it out, it's
>     just not tried by default.
> 
>  -- Scott James Remnant <scott at ubuntu.com>  Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:38:43 +0000

SJR doesn't seem to be aware that bootlogd buffers data until it has a chance
to write to the log file.
-- 
Thomas Hood