conf/100616: [patch] syslog.conf: lines after exclamation point ignored

[Royce Williams]

The following reply was made to PR conf/100616; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Royce Williams <royce at alaska.net>
To: David Malone <dwmalone at maths.tcd.ie>
Cc: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: conf/100616: [patch] syslog.conf: lines after exclamation point
 ignored
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:08:29 -0800

 David Malone wrote, on 10/7/2008 12:42 AM:
 > Personally, I think snappier would be better I think - how about:
 > 
 > # NB: To comment out lines starting with a "!" use "##" - see syslog.conf(5).
 
 Agreed - short, to the point.
 
 >> Now about the possible bug.  Even if commenting out the !startslip 
 >> doesn't really comment it out, but instead triggers this legacy 
 >> support, why would all subsequent unrelated configuration lines get 
 >> ignored?  From my testing, any lines added after the example '!' lines
 >> are ignored entirely.  Surely that's not part of the functionality?  
 >> Or am I missing something?  Are you able to recreate the symptom that 
 >> I'm seeing, as described in the PR?
 > 
 > The program specification (or a host specification) applies to all
 > subsequent lines, until it is reset. To reset it, you need to have
 > a line that says:
 > 
 > !*
 > 
 > or the equivelent "#!*". This is explained in the man page below
 > in the paragraph after host specifications, but we've had several
 > people confused about it, so I suspect the man page is not clear
 > enough. If you have an idea bout how to make it clearer, let me
 > know!
 
 Ah.  That's what I get for only reading that paragraph!
 
 Since the existing stock syslog.conf doesn't have these resets,
 then as written, they're incomplete and should probably be fixed
 as follows:
 
 
 +++ syslog.conf.new     2008-10-07 11:03:08.000000000 -0800
 @@ -26,7 +26,10 @@
  # news.crit                                    /var/log/news/news.crit
  # news.err                                     /var/log/news/news.err
  # news.notice                                  /var/log/news/news.notice
 +# NB: To comment out lines starting with a "!" use "##" - see syslog.conf(5).
  !startslip
  *.*                                            /var/log/slip.log
 +!*
  !ppp
  *.*                                            /var/log/ppp.log
 +!*
 
 ... or something similar?
 
 In this way, POLA is restored -- unsuspecting users can add new lines 
 without being caught in the same way that I was.
 
 Royce
 
 
 -- 
 Royce D. Williams                                   - http://royce.ws/
 Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.~RAH