svlogd(8) System Manager's Manual svlogd(8)
NAME
svlogd - runit's service logging daemon
SYNOPSIS
svlogd [-tttv] [-r c] [-R xyz] [-l len] [-b buflen] logs
DESCRIPTION
logs consists of one or more arguments, each specifying a directory.
svlogd continuously reads log data from its standard input, optionally filters log messages, and writes the data to one or more automati-
cally rotated logs.
Recent log files can automatically be processed by an arbitrary processor program when they are rotated, and svlogd can be told to alert
selected log messages to standard error, and through udp.
svlogd runs until it sees end-of-file on standard input or is sent a TERM signal, see below.
LOG DIRECTORY
A log directory log contains some number of old log files, and the current log file current. Old log files have a file name starting with
@ followed by a precise timestamp (see the daemontools' tai64n program), indicating when current was rotated and renamed to this file.
A log directory additionally contains the lock file lock, maybe state and newstate, and optionally the file config. svlogd creates neces-
sary files if they don't exist.
If svlogd has trouble opening a log directory, it prints a warning, and ignores this log directory. If svlogd is unable to open all log
directories given at the command line, it exits with an error. This can happen on start-up or after receiving a HUP signal.
LOG FILE ROTATION
svlogd appends selected log messages to the current log file. If current has size bytes or more (or there is a new-line within the last
len of size bytes), or is older than a specified amount of time, current is rotated:
svlogd closes current, changes permission of current to 0755, renames current to @timestamp.s, and starts with a new empty current. If
svlogd sees num or more old log files in the log directory, it removes the oldest one. Note that this doesn't decrease the number of log
files if there are already more than num log files, this must be done manually, e.g. for keeping 10 log files:
ls -1 @* |sort |sed -ne '10,$p' |xargs rm
PROCESSOR
If svlogd is told to process recent log files, it saves current to @timestamp.u, feeds @timestamp.u through ``sh -c "processor"'' and
writes the output to @timestamp.t. If the processor finishes successfully, @timestamp.t is renamed to @timestamp.s, and @timestamp.u is
deleted; otherwise @timestamp.t is deleted and the processor is started again. svlogd also saves any output that the processor writes to
file descriptor 5, and makes that output available on file descriptor 4 when running processor on the next log file rotation.
A processor is run in the background. If svlogd sees a previously started processor still running when trying to start a new one for the
same log, it blocks until the currently running processor has finished successfully. Only the HUP signal works in that situation. Note
that this may block any program feeding its log data to svlogd.
CONFIG
On startup, and after receiving a HUP signal, svlogd checks for each log directory log if the configuration file log/config exists, and if
so, reads the file line by line and adjusts configuration for log as follows:
If the line is empty, or starts with a ``#'', it is ignored. A line of the form
ssize sets the maximum file size of current when svlogd should rotate the current log file to size bytes. Default is 1000000. If size is
zero, svlogd doesn't rotate log files. You should set size to at least (2 * len).
nnum sets the number of old log files svlogd should maintain to num. If svlogd sees more that num old log files in log after log file
rotation, it deletes the oldest one. Default is 10. If num is zero, svlogd doesn't remove old log files.
Nmin sets the minimum number of old log files svlogd should maintain to min. min must be less than num. If min is set, and svlogd can-
not write to current because the filesystem is full, and it sees more than min old log files, it deletes the oldest one.
ttimeout
sets the maximum age of the current log file when svlogd should rotate the current log file to timeout seconds. If current is time-
out seconds old, and is not empty, svlogd forces log file rotation.
!processor
tells svlogd to feed each recent log file through processor (see above) on log file rotation. By default log files are not pro-
cessed.
ua.b.c.d[:port]
tells svlogd to transmit the first len characters of selected log messages to the IP address a.b.c.d, port number port. If port
isn't set, the default port for syslog is used (514). len can be set through the -l option, see below. If svlogd has trouble send-
ing udp packets, it writes error messages to the log directory. Attention: logging through udp is unreliable, and should be used in
private networks only.
Ua.b.c.d[:port]
is the same as the u line above, but the log messages are no longer written to the log directory, but transmitted through udp only.
Error messages from svlogd concerning sending udp packages still go to the log directory.
pprefix
tells svlogd to prefix each line to be written to the log directory, to standard error, or through UDP, with prefix.
If a line starts with a -, +, e, or E, svlogd matches the first len characters of each log message against pattern and acts accordingly:
-pattern
the log message is deselected.
+pattern
the log message is selected.
epattern
the log message is selected to be printed to standard error.
Epattern
the log message is deselected to be printed to standard error.
Initially each line is selected to be written to log/current. Deselected log messages are discarded from log. Initially each line is des-
elected to be written to standard err. Log messages selected for standard error are written to standard error.
PATTERN MATCHING
svlogd matches a log message against the string pattern as follows:
pattern is applied to the log message one character by one, starting with the first. A character not a star (``*'') and not a plus (``+'')
matches itself. A plus matches the next character in pattern in the log message one or more times. A star before the end of pattern
matches any string in the log message that does not include the next character in pattern. A star at the end of pattern matches any
string.
Timestamps optionally added by svlogd are not considered part of the log message.
An svlogd pattern is not a regular expression. For example consider a log message like this
2005-12-18_09:13:50.97618 tcpsvd: info: pid 1977 from 10.4.1.14
The following pattern doesn't match
-*pid*
because the first star matches up to the first p in tcpsvd, and then the match fails because i is not s. To match this log message, you
can use a pattern like this instead
-*: *: pid *
OPTIONS
-t timestamp. Prefix each selected line with a precise timestamp (see the daemontools' tai64n program) when writing to log or to stan-
dard error.
-tt timestamp. Prefix each selected line with a human readable, sortable UTC timestamp of the form YYYY-MM-DD_HH:MM:SS.xxxxx when writ-
ing to log or to standard error.
-ttt timestamp. Prefix each selected line with a human readable, sortable UTC timestamp of the form YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.xxxxx when writ-
ing to log or to standard error.
-r c replace. c must be a single character. Replace non-printable characters in log messages with c. Characters are replaced before
pattern matching is applied.
-R xyz replace charset. Additionally to non-printable characters, replace all characters found in xyz with c (default ``_'').
-l len line length. Pattern matching applies to the first len characters of a log message only. Default is 1000.
-b buflen
buffer size. Set the size of the buffer svlogd uses when reading from standard input and writing to logs to buflen. Default is
1024. buflen must be greater than len. For svlogd instances that process a lot of data in short time, the buffer size should be
increased to improve performance.
-v verbose. Print verbose messages to standard error.
SIGNALS
If svlogd is sent a HUP signal, it closes and reopens all logs, and updates their configuration according to log/config. If svlogd has
trouble opening a log directory, it prints a warning, and discards this log directory. If svlogd is unable to open all log directories
given at the command line, it exits with an error.
If svlogd is sent a TERM signal, or if it sees end-of-file on standard input, it stops reading standard input, processes the data in the
buffer, waits for all processor subprocesses to finish if any, and exits 0 as soon as possible.
If svlogd is sent an ALRM signal, it forces log file rotation for all logs with a non empty current log file.
SEE ALSO
sv(8), runsv(8), chpst(8), runit(8), runit-init(8), runsvdir(8), runsvchdir(8)
http://smarden.org/runit/
AUTHOR
Gerrit Pape <pape@smarden.org>
svlogd(8)