Red Hat's Linux Changes Raise New Questions

itwbennett writes "Last month two Red Hat developers proposed to replace the 30-year-old syslog system with a new Journal daemon. Initial reaction was mostly negative and 'focused on the Journal's use of a binary key-value form of data to log system events,' says blogger Brian Proffit. But now, says Proffitt, it seems that the proposal to replace syslog has less to do with the fixing syslog's problems than with Red Hat's desire to go its own way with Linux infrastructure."

Comments

One of the advantages of Linux

[Todd Knarr]

That's one of the advantages of Linux: RedHat can go their own way without needing the rest of us to buy in, and without really messing things up for us. If they provide a reasonable API, it'll either be compatible with syslog with a simple library substitution or we'll quickly see a wrapper library that allows programs to use either syslog or Journal without needing code changes.

I think going to binary's a bad idea, myself. The fewer tools you need working to find out what the error is, the easier it is to debug and fix the problem. But let RedHat try this and see how it works, and then we can decide once we've got some real-world data to compare.

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[skids]

That's one of the advantages of Linux: RedHat can go their own way without needing the rest of us to buy in, and without really messing things up for us.

Not quite true. If PHB insists on RHEL, you're stuck coping with whatever poor choices they make.

Why do I get the sense that all the chafing at the "restrictions" of the LSB/linux-instinct/unix-way/common-sense is just the bellyaching that happens when you realize you're short the talent/energy/whatever to progress and start looking for ways to re-arrange the deck chairs?

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[MightyMartian]

No matter your experience, plain-text logs make more sense, especially in *nix operating systems. You have a vast array of tools to search log files with; my favorites being tail and grep. The minute you go to binary logging your options shrink or you end up having to use additional tools to reconvert it to text (ie. the Windows event log).

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[CAIMLAS]

Looks like they're pulling the same shit Ubuntu pulled with upstart (init replacement). "Let's replace something simple and elegant with something complex, incomplete, and very difficult to fix when it goes wrong".

Sorry, but no thanks. I can see the need for something else, in a limited/special purpose role, but these assholes are aggregately destroying the very basis of what makes Linux a good, robust server choice:

* you can use traditional unix tools from ssh to manipulate and analyze the system
* there are literally thousands of tools for analyzing, manipulating, and storing syslog data
* init is purely linear, whereas upstart is threaded, increasing the possible ways in which it can fail as well as increasing the difficulty of troubleshooting
* KISS means broken things are more obvious.
* KISS means there's less that can go wrong.
* Most Windows guys don't even read the logs, from what I've seen. This could quite possibly be related to the complexity and lack of utility of Event Viewer itself, granted, but even Event Logs can be exported to syslog...

While we're at it, why don't we start using XML or sqlite as a replacement for /etc.

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[LordLimecat]

Not quite true. If PHB insists on RHEL, you're stuck coping with whatever poor choices they make.

Package management: use it. I would be very surprised if RedHat prevented you from installing whatever logging facility you wanted on your server.

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[Iphtashu Fitz]

RedHat can go their own way without needing the rest of us to buy in

The only problem with your argument is that Red Hat has a huge base of paying customers, and money talks.

I manage a small research cluster at a university. It's running Red Hat linux on over 100 nodes. The university has a site license for Red Hat so licensing for the cluster isn't an issue. The decision to go with Red Hat had to do mainly with what distros are directly supported by commercial products like Matlab, Mathematica, Abaqus, Maple, Comsol, Ansys, etc. All these vendors sell lots of software & services to universities, research labs, etc. and they all support Red Hat linux.

I've personally dealt with support departments when trying to run commercial software on non-RH distros, and in some cases they pretty much tell you you're on your own if you're not using RH or one of the other top two or three distros. Most commercial vendors will only state that they support RedHat, SUSE, and maybe Ubuntu and/or Debian.

If/when Red Hat comes out with a new way of doing things then customers like us will start pushing on the vendors to support those new ways. After all, we're tied into using Red Hat, and we need their products to run on it. So the commercial software vendors will start supporting the Red Hat way of doing things to appease their customers. And once the commercial vendors start supporting it then it will slowly but surely make its way into other distributions as well so that these apps can run on distros that other people want to use.

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[rsilvergun]

Yeah, but you add a bunch of overhead to get back to text.

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[DiegoBravo]

Many times with a (semi)broken operating system, you don't have all the usual tools.... sometimes your only clue is a syslog driven console text message.

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[Hatta]

If it sucks, it will die.

On what do you base this assumption? History is littered with sucky technologies that became standard because someone important was pushing it.

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[MightyMartian]

So now on top of a crippled system, you've got to move the logs over to a system so you can read them? This is exactly what you're faced with when a Windows system takes a dive, and it sucks.

Re:One of the advantages of Linux

[mabhatter654]

Wow.. I forget there are OSes that don't have serial panel output for error codes! Or Operator "key" codes to force diagnostic modes?

Coming from an AS400 background this article shows how silly "normal" system management is. To answer the parent, the system can be issued boot time commands in HARDWARE (which are also available for virtual machines) that will bring the system to a minimal "restricted" console state. That's like a cornerstone of the system and IBM doesn't mess with that.

Next, the proposal Red Hat has is a very AS400 concept. The History Log (QHST) and the Security Audit Journal (QAUDJRN) are both binary structures that have hard-coded readers built into the kernel. The system maintains internal integrity of the files with extra fields you never see. Of course the AS400 native file system is "DATABASE"-based. So any command that outputs from these displays to a screen or to something that can be instantly searched with SQL.

I'm certain that is what they are trying to make here. Ultimately in security you care about the integrity of the logs more than even recovering the system... Especially when to don't have to restart for a year at a time or more. Frankly, they should add an output option for SQLite file types and everybody can be happy.

Realize that when places like banks use AS400's they mirror the raw audit journals off to another system, often hundreds a day. Because the are binary journals, they are difficult to tamper with because they interlink with eachother. Yet at the same time because they are a data type programs can monitor them for specific events automatically and it's trivial to set up actions to take.

Avoid binary please!!

[Anonymous Coward]

When everything else is failing ... you still need to be able to dig into the the syslogs reliably no matter what! One little hiccup and you can easily lose everything in most binary type implementations, while at worst you see a little garbage in the syslogs!

Re:Avoid binary please!!

[GameboyRMH]

Or just use a network log server, which is both better from a security standpoint and lets you keep your plaintext logs.

Re:Just more things to break ...

[LordLimecat]

Keep on fragmenting each distro

The whole point of a distro is that it is DIFFERENT from the others around it, not that it is similar. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and the various things they try can be pulled into other projects.

For instance, Canonical has been talking about rolling Wayland in as a replacement for X in Ubuntu. It might be a phenomenal failure, or it might be incredibly successful. If it works well, Im sure RedHat, CentOS, Debian, etc will all pull it in as well, and some bit of progress will have been made. If it sucks and dies, well, that too is progress.

Whining by some guy with a log analyzer

[Animats]

This is just whining by some guy who wrote a log analyzer that will no longer be necessary.

QNX has had a simple structured log daemon for years. Reading their log never tails off into junk; you always get a clean, current last record. Their solution even works on diskless systems. In many real-time applications, logs are transmitted to some remote location, rather than being kept on each local machine.

That works both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

You will also be stuck with all the good choices they make.

Reading what they are proposing it seems that is actually a very good idea. When you get out of hobbyist and small environments and into environments with more demanding requirements about security auditing the traditional syslog has not cut it for years anymore. The first step in many environments is usually to rip it mostly off and replace with some more or less proprietary environment.

The new ideas such as improving the reliability of log shipping, reducing possibilities towards tampering, and improving chances for more advanced log analysis are really awesome things - especially for people who are serious about their logging. Syslog and its text format are legacy poison and it will be good to see them die and vanish. Hopefully that happens fast.

Also, keep in mind that that RedHat is still open sourcing that stuff. They will provide tools and APIs - as they require those also themselves.

Re:That works both ways

[mlts]

Even though the syslog is in a binary format, it would be nice to have it also stored in text as well. For example, on some sensitive machines, I would have the syslog redirect to an IBM3151 serial terminal for real time monitoring. This way, I could immediately tell if a job started at its appropriate time, finished, or caused issues.

IMHO, the best way RedHat should implement this is similar to how AIX does logging. It has its own format for logs that are read using the errpt command. However, one can turn on plain old syslog logging and have that able to be stored in a file, forwarded to a log server, or shipped via a serial connection to a secure log drop that has no network access. It would be nice to have a signed, secure format for logs, but also nice to have plain text to watch in realtime and search from without requiring specialized commands.

Re:Are Linux Fans Really About Innovation?

[jd]

Innovation is fine. Invention is better, but if you can't have that then innovation makes a decent replacement. However, Unity isn't really inventive or innovative, and attempting to force someone to use one DWM is definitely a regression.

You are confusing change/novelty with creativity. They're not the same.

And, yes, there SHOULD be push-back. Once it goes past the early adopters, it will make its way to the Real World(tm) where the REAL critics hold multi-million dollar contracts in one hand and a fine sherry in the other. Those critics know nothing about the value of technology, but they know the price of everything, especially that of technology. You WANT the flaws ironed-out before then. You WANT to have put the software not just through the reliability and quality tests but also through the user acceptability tests and the PR tests. You WANT well-tempered systems, honed to damn-well near perfection.

Because, in the end, without those multi-million dollar contracts, the Ubuntus and the Red Hats of the world simply aren't going to bother. There won't be any development at all if we lose the big players at this stage. Linux isn't a garage development project any more, or hadn't you seen the kernel contribution stats on LWN? We NEED the corporations to want to invest not just the time and money they're spending now but more of it. And we won't get that without the PHBs.

Do the PHBs care about Unity or loggers? Directly, no. They care about image and if the unwashed masses turn away from Linux, that's bad image. If there's a security flaw, that's major bad image. If it costs more for the developers to do the same amount of work because of added inefficiencies, especially when the shareholders are baying at the door, that's lethal image. Doesn't matter if Windows would be worse, PHBs won't think like that. Linux is a gamble and it HAS to pay and pay big.