Re: Logging in a web server context

["Carl Winbäck" <c@tunnel53.net>]

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>
> Replying to a private mail here on the list in case it is of interest
> to someone else.[1]
>
> On Sat, 13 Jun 2020 at 12:05, Arsen Arsenović <arsen@managarm.org> wrote:
> > You're interested in nginxes `error_log', `access_log' and
> > `log_format' directives, I believe.
> > It can write both directly to a file, for better or for worse.
> > You could use fifos to separate the logs into different logdirs, but
> > I'm unsure of how well that would work, since AFAIK it also tries to
> > rotate logs every so often.
>
> Yes, nginx can write its messages to either stdout, stderr, syslog or
> directly to a file. Nginx itself will not do any log rotation. That
> could be handled by logrotate(8). But IMHO, using logrotate(8) or
> syslog feels like clumsy and outdated solutions.
>
> Syslog was introduced in the early 80s and I don’t believe that its
> design has aged well. logrotate(8) has the issue that it cannot work
> in tandem with neither the daemon nor the supervisor. This is
> something that Jonathan de Boyne Pollard has described well in his
> article “Don’t use logrotate or newsyslog in this century”.[1]
>
> > Personally, I'd just drop access logs entirely in favor of either
> > nothing, or Matomo.
>
> Yes, that could be an option and I will consider it. It needs way more
> computing resources though[3]. With that said, this option offers some
> features that an access log analyzer doesn’t.
>
>
>
> [1] Arsen has approved of this posting :)
> [2] https://jdebp.eu/FGA/do-not-use-logrotate.html
> [3] See
> https://www.mail-archive.com/supervision@list.skarnet.org/msg02185.html
> [4]
> https://matomo.org/docs/requirements/#recommended-servers-sizing-cpu-ram-disks
>