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Tasklist

FS#2843 - There should be a a group "log"

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Maksim Sipos (maxsipos) - Saturday, 18 June 2005, 03:47 GMT
Last edited by Jürgen Hötzel (juergen) - Sunday, 19 June 2005, 18:16 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category System
Status Closed
Assigned To Judd Vinet (judd)
Architecture not specified
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version 0.7 Wombat
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 0%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

I suggest an addition of group "log" to /etc/group. This would allow privileged users to read the system logs.

In /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf:

options {
sync (0);
time_reopen (10);
log_fifo_size (1000);
long_hostnames(off);
use_dns (no);
use_fqdn (no);
create_dirs (no);
keep_hostname (yes);
perm(0640); <<<
group("log"); <<<
};

It needs to be decided what GUID should be set for group "log" in /etc/group

Finally, it seems that the permissions on the logs would need to be changed.

Code:

chgrp log /var/log/*.log
chmod 0640 /var/log/*.log
This task depends upon

Closed by  Judd Vinet (judd)
Wednesday, 24 August 2005, 21:40 GMT
Reason for closing:  Implemented
Comment by Jürgen Hötzel (juergen) - Sunday, 19 June 2005, 07:51 GMT
I think this a customisation issue. In Archlinux "do it yourself" philosophy the default configuration should be as simple as possible.

by the way, some daemons create their own logfiles without utilizing syslog (apache, samba)

Jürgen
Comment by Maksim Sipos (maxsipos) - Sunday, 19 June 2005, 17:30 GMT
Hm, I don't think this would make things more complex. It certainly wouldn't break syslog-ng or anybody's ability to read the logs. Compared to the number of other predefined groups (23 on my system), it doesn't seem like a big difference.

Do note that some users like being able to check their logs (I have a setup streaming important syslog stuff into torsmo on my desktop), and they have two possibilities:
1) su
2) the above shown setup, which involves quite a bit of reading and the confusing explanation of group() option in syslog-ng.conf man page.

In fact, two other users expressed the same idea, see http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=12814 .

However I can see you point regarding apache and samba logs. Therefore the group could be called "syslog" and allow the users to read.. system logs.

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