Unix::Syslog -- Perl interface to the UNIX system logger ======================================================== Copyright (C) 1999 Marcus Harnisch Introduction ============ This Module provides access to the system logger available on most UNIX system via Perl's XSUBs (Perl's C interface). I wrote this module because of some features I missed in Sys:Syslog (see FAQ below) and also to do my first steps into the secrets of Perl's XSUBs. Copyright and distribution ========================== This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Artistic License. A copy of the license (see file Artistic in this directory) must be included in the package. Installation ============ Unix::Syslog is a Perl module that makes use of XSUBs and hence requires a working C compiler and library. Execute the following commands to install this package (`make test' prints the results of a test suite. Execute `make install' only if the required tests finished successfully or if you know what you are doing): perl Makefile.PL make test make install Note: Some tests may fail because the respective constants are not available on certain systems. You should be able to distinguish these tests from those that fail because of a malfunction by carefully reading the output of the test routines. OS dependent behaviour and portability ====================================== This package uses system specific functions. Programs that uses this package may not be portable in any case. If you plan to write portable code using this package, please consult the manuals of the systems you wish to run the software on. Then modify your program accordingly. Known bugs ========== OS Description Workaround --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linux On systems using glibc2, setting the None possible. log mask does not change the behaviour of syslog() as expected until recent versions of glibc (> version 2.1) Frequently Asked Questions ========================== 1. What is the benefit I get from using this module instead of Sys::Syslog? Sys::Syslog always opens a network connection to the syslog service. At least on Linux systems this leads into some trouble, because - Linux syslogd (from package sysklogd) does not listen to the network by default. Most people working on stand-alone machines (including me) don't see any reason to enable this option just to make a single application work. Others don't enable it for security reasons. - By default Linux syslogd doesn't forward messages to other log hosts which have already been received from the network. There are reasons not to enable this option unless it is really neccessary. Looping messages resulting from a faulty configuration may break down your (log-)system. - The interface resembles that of the syslog(3) routines. 2. Is there any reason to use Sys:Syslog any longer? Yes! In contrary to Unix::Syslog, Sys::Syslog works even if you are not running a syslog daemon on your system as long as you are connected to a log host via a network and have access to the syslog.h header file of your log host to generate the header files for Sys::Syslog (see Sys::Syslog(3) for details). Unix::Syslog only logs to your local syslog daemon which in turn may be configured to distribute the message over the network. 3. Are calls to the functions provided by Unix::Syslog compatible to those of Sys::Syslog? Currently not. Sys::Syslog requires strings to specify many of the arguments to the functions, while Unix::Syslog uses numeric constants accessed via macros as defined in syslog.h. Although the strings used by Sys::Syslog are also defined in syslog.h, it seems that most people got used to the numeric arguments. I will implement the string based calls if there are enough people ($min_people > 10**40) complaining about the lack of compatibility. However, patches are welcome. Comments, Bug reports and Suggestions ===================================== Please direct anything you wish to tell me about this package to the address given below. Have fun, Marcus Harnisch