Please pick another group for this thread, and please use syslog! (Re: Checking system call returns (Was Re: Complexity of reallocating storage (was users command crap)))

[Barton Christopher Massey]

In article <17398:Feb511:22:0891 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
...
> If your answer is
> ``syslog,'' has it occurred to you that any syslog implementation must
> either lose messages in some cases or must allow a denial-of-service
> attack by one program upon all others that use the service?
...

Aiggh!  I swore to myself I would keep my mouth (my fingers? :-) shut, but I
just can't stand it any more!  First things first:  THIS DISCUSSION DOESN'T
BELONG IN comp.lang.c OR comp.bugs.4bsd .  Please go away!  Please note my
Followup-To line, echoing the suggestion of previous posters, and use it, or
some other similar group.

Dan, please reread the above-quoted paragraph, and think for just a moment.

If your answer is that it still sounds sensible, has it occured to you that
*any* server which provides access to a finite resource must either drop
requests in some cases or must allow a denial-of-service attack by one
client upon all others that use the server?

So, for example, throw away your disk drivers, Dan -- they've got to either
drop some write requests on the ground or allow one program to deny write
access to the rest by filling up the disk!  I'm sure you'd never consider
using such an ill-starred piece of software!  Throw away your network
drivers -- they've got to either drop or arbitrarily delay some outgoing
messages or allow one program to hog the entire network bandwidth!

I know that you have an extreme (and IMHO completely irrational) distaste
for syslog.  The fact remains that many quite competent and sane people,
including myself, think it's one of the best things that ever happened to
error reporting for daemon processes, and quite frankly I give major brownie
points for daemons that use it, and seriously consider hacking or discarding
daemons that don't.  If you don't want to use it yourself, don't, but please
quit discouraging others less experienced than yourself from doing so -- it's
always much easier to remove or alter the error handling code than it is to
add it...

					Bart Massey
					bart at cs.uoregon.edu