SYSLOGD

Synopsis

SYSLOGD [/?] [/SERVERIP address] [/SERVERPORT port]

Description

SYSLOGD is a server dæmon that provides UDP system log service. (This service is not defined for TCP.) It is an aid to cope with certain sorts of wrongly written applications.

The content of all datagrams received by SYSLOGD is written to its own log, allowing the log output to be handled in the normal manner. SYSLOGD writes each UDP datagram exactly as it was received, preceded by a timestamp and the datagram sender's IP address and port, and followed by a newline.

SYSLOGD can exactly duplicate all of the functionality of IBM's SYSLOGD, except for UDP datagram forwarding. (Forwarding the UDP datagrams elsewhere is almost as daft an idea as the idea of using UDP for logging.) The default behaviour of IBM's SYSLOGD can be duplicated by invoking SYSLOGD as:

[c:\Apps\JdeBP\IU]syslogd 2>> %ETC%\SysLogD.MSG

The behaviour of IBM's SYSLOGD when the -t option is used to redirect the log out to file can be duplicated by using the ordinary redirection mechanisms provided by the command interpreter:

[c:\Apps\JdeBP\IU]syslogd 2>> filename

Note: Not only are applications that use the "syslog" service badly designed, they are also badly implemented. There appears to be no agreement amongst applications as to what IP address they attempt to send their log data to. Some choose 127.0.0.1. Some choose 0.0.0.0. Unfortunately, choosing to have SYSLOGD listen on the latter IP address in order to cope with all such programs means that the syslog service becomes accessible externally, which makes it possible for external syslog clients to add garbage entries to the log. This is yet another reason that this mechanism is a badly designed one that should be avoided.

Command-specific options


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