syslogd, exec and alarms

[Eric Crist]

On Aug 20, 2007, at 8:11 PMAug 20, 2007, Darren Henderson wrote:

>
> I have a syslog.conf line that has a selector pointing to action  
> that is a perl script. The script takes action based on the content  
> of the line passed to it. Simple stuff. Works fine.
>
> Wanting to be resource sensitive, I would like the script to  
> terminate after so many idle seconds - its likely to get occasional  
> bursts of input with quiet periods here and there. No problem, set  
> an alarm with a maximum idle time and shutdown if it fires.
>
> This works fine if I execute the script from the command line.  
> Doesn't work at all if spawned by syslogd. I assume syslogd or the  
> sh being fired to spawn the command are grabbing the alarm signal  
> for themselves. I am missing something obvious. Is there any way to  
> make this work?
>
> As it is I can keep the program going all the time or I can have  
> syslogd respawn it every time a line is sent. Neither option is  
> appealing.
>
> This problem seems to be relatively resistant to google searches  
> for me thus far.
>

Darren,

 From my limited understanding, the process that is spawned by that  
alarm is killed by syslogd once whatever it's supposed to do is  
killed.  I'm not sure what options you've really got.

HTH
-----
Eric F Crist
Secure Computing Networks