Background

This patch grew out of a project needing to support syslog files on an embedded platform machine with only RAM and flash. No disk and no swap space. Placing the log files on the flash disk would introduce excessive wear on the flash device. Placing the log files in RAM resulted in a slow squeeze of available memory as they grew ever larger.

By introducing circular logfiles, it becomes possible to put the syslog files on a RAM disk but contain them at a constant size that can be planned for and does not require routine maintenance inappropriate to an embedded device.

Support for circular logfiles requires a small patch to syslogd and a support program called clog. The clog program creates the circular logfiles and can be used to view their contents.

Downloads

Source code for this software is available under the BSD public license:

• The formatted manual page for clog.
• The context diff patch for syslogd.
• The complete syslogd source.
• The complete clog source.

In order to build the patched syslogd, the clog source must be available in a sibling directory. That is, if syslogd is in /usr/src/usr.sbin/syslogd, then clog should be unpacked to /usr/src/usr.sbin/clog.

Release History

1.0.1

Fixed an oversight in clog that made it act as if the -f option was always in use. 10/2/2001

1.0

Initial release. 10/1/2001