Howdy, folks.

Is anyone out there using syslogd on MPE?  I've found some things that
surprise me when trying to use it with stunnel (which I've essentially
finished porting to MPE [6.5 and later only] and will have a more official
announcement when it's packaged up better... i.e., Real Soon Now).

The SYSLOG account and files in it (syslog.h, libsyslog.a, syslog.conf,
etc.) exist on the 6.5 and 7.0 systems which I have here, which makes me
suspect it came with FOS.  However, the syslog.conf file looks (at least to
me) like it's more of an example of how *not* to configure syslogd than
anything close to a reasonable default configuration.  Or am I
misunderstanding something (probably something fundamental) that makes the
"out of the box" syslog.conf on MPE make sense?

On an A400 with MPE 7.0.1+patches, whenever writing to /dev/console (either
through syslogd or directly from stunnel (compiled with GCC 3.0.4) I am
getting three copies of each message on the system console, instead of just
one.  Oddly, writing to /dev/console from syslogd or stunnel *does* send
messages (in triplicate remember!) to the console EVEN THOUGH /dev/console
doesn't seem to exist as a device file (or any other file type) on the
system.  However, :TELLOP messages appear one time on the console (as
expected).  Why are /dev/console messages being duplicated?  Why (or perhaps
how) does opening /dev/console through the C API (from GCC) get messages to
the console when no file named /dev/console even exists?

On a 918LX with MPE 6.5.2+patches, writing directly to /dev/console from
stunnel just creates a bytestream file (just as if I'd directed it to
/tmp/console or any other previously nonexistent filename) which is what I
would expect since no file named /dev/console previously existed.  However,
when syslogd is directed to /dev/console it writes to the logical console,
but the lines are truncated after 72 bytes (plus the typical console message
prefix with time, jobnum and pin; e.g., "12;34/#S99/123/").  (Note that on
the 7.0 machine mentioned in the preceding paragraph the messages are not
being truncated.)

Is syslogd actually doing a :TELLOP or more likely PRINTOP() when it sees
/dev/console in the configuration?

Also, on both MPE 6.5 and 7.0, /SYSLOG/PUB/syslog.h has all the constants
that need to be defined to use the syslog API from C, but the prototypes for
openlog(), syslog() and closelog() aren't there.  Why not?  And where are
they?  [FWIW: The same problem exists in /usr/include/time.h where (among
other things) the prototype for the select() function is supposed to be
defined according to the Berkeley Sockets manual.]

If anyone has some useful or enlightening comments about why these things
are the way they are and how to make them behave better, I'd love to hear
them.
--
Jeff Woods
[log in to unmask]
Quintessential School Systems

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *