pseudo-log rotate

[David Collier]

In article <4D37206C.2020404 at gmx.de>, ralda at gmx.de (Harald Becker) wrote:

> *From:* Harald Becker <ralda at gmx.de>
> *To:* from_busybox_maillist at dexdyne.com
> *CC:* busybox at busybox.net, jeredb at dexdyne.com
> *Date:* Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:33:32 +0100
> 
>  Hallo David!
> > syslogd - can it be bent to my purpose in any way?
> Why do you want do bent everything? Why don't you do/use the things 
> the
> way it is intended?

Thanks for the advice - I can see that it would work if the previous
programmer had started out to use it on day one.

I had seen the "system log" as something for Linux processes to use - not
for user apps to add to. Maybe that is a false understanding.

I have inherited a suite of programs, each of which runs as a process,
which do not have the "tagname" built-into their progress or debug output
messages.

It will take me forever to go and find every printf in every source file (
or other output caused ) and try to tag it. I don't know if there may  be
things which the s/w does using system facilities like
    system( ls -l logdirectory )  
where tagging each line may not be possible.

I would prefer that the system logs the output from each of my 10+
processes in a separate file.

That does have the advantage that if a process fails, but I don't notice
for 24 hours ( these things are in a field in Peru. ) the file for that
process will contain it's last dying words, they won't have been rotated
away by it's verbose and still living, cousins.

I think my preference is a valid point of view :-)

D