ports at freebsd.org

[Dennis Glatting]

On Sun, 2014-08-10 at 10:58 +0200, Marko Cupać wrote:
> On Sat, 09 Aug 2014 12:13:46 -0700
> Dennis Glatting <freebsd at pki2.com> wrote:
> 
> > I am working on updating Cacti to StageDir and have a question on web
> > log access policies.
> > 
> > Cacti creates a log directory under /usr/local/share/cacti where the
> > poller stuffs log and other information into a file named cacti.log.
> > There is a .htaccess file in that directory too. The log file is
> > accessible though Cacti's web interface 'Console -> Utilities -> View
> > Cacti Log File' and displayed in a 'tail -f' related way.
> > 
> > Hier says /var/log/ is:
> > 
> > 	miscellaneous system log files
> > 
> > What is application preferential log file locations? Follow hier or
> > application dependent?
> > 
> > 
> > Cacti also manages RRD files under /usr/local/share/cacti/rra/. Hier
> > says about /var/db/:
> > 
> > 	miscellaneous automatically generated 
> > 	system-specific database files
> 
> Hi Dennis,
> 
> thanx for staging Cacti port. If you are changing log location outside
> cacti web dir, how do you plan to make it accessible from web
> interface? Do you intend to symlink it or something else?
> 
> Perhaps it would be best to stage the port without any other changes
> first, and consider improvements later?
> 

The patches I have now, and NOT yet submitted, patch the settings files.
I also patch the PERL load path in the .pl files from /usr/bin
to /usr/local/bin. I am currently working on updating pkg-message and a
verification install. The package passes the install checks (finally)
mentioned in the Porter's Handbook.

In my personal installation I've had the log files in /var/log since the
beginning (several years) however access to the web interface is limited
to three people. Of those three, I am the only one who looks at the
logs. I DO NOT have a symlink in cacti/log. I am concerned
about .htaccess in other installations which is why I posted, although I
believe (falsely?) it isn't much of an issue.

I also personally do not like applications stuffing their output (e.g.,
logs) into /usr/local. It's cumbersome from a management perspective and
out of hier norm. That said, the application is the application and we
want it to exist for a reason. If that means to respect where the
application wants to put things, then that's what needs to happen. For
example, I am assuming the specification of log files is in a single
place (it is) but if it wasn't then I'm not here to correct many hard
codings.