Re: Service socklog-unix locks users out of the system if /var/log/socklog does not exist

[abhocetabhac <abhocetabhac@users.noreply.github.com>]

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New comment by abhocetabhac on void-packages repository

https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/issues/54043#issuecomment-2849210573

Comment:
I strongly disagree. A logging service that can lock out the root user simply because a directory is missing is not an "imaginary issue" — it’s a serious and untenable failure mode. If the required conditions for the service to start are not met, it should, at a minimum, report the error (no pun intended) and exit gracefully, not silently hang and render the system inaccessible.

Blaming users for mounting /var/log on tmpfs is not a reasonable position. That’s a common and valid configuration in many Unix-like systems, including Void. Services should be resilient to such setups and recover or fail cleanly when prerequisites are missing. Expecting all users to predict and manually patch around this kind of failure undermines the reliability of the system.

The fact that this situation can prevent root logins entirely elevates it beyond a mere inconvenience — it’s a critical reliability and usability flaw.