Joachim Wiberg
b9ad9bcb21
The syntax overview no longer describes a line-based format, since that is not what the rest of the documentation shows. It now covers the grammar, the two naming conventions, the nine aliases, and the leading '-' on a path, and it says plainly that both formats are still read and told apart per file by content. Without that, a reader with an existing configuration is left wondering what happened to it. service-opts.md was a list of modifiers to place between a directive and its command, so it needed rewriting rather than translating: there are no positions left to describe. It is now grouped by what the settings do. conditions.md needed correcting. It presented '!' as a condition prefix alongside '~'. It is neither a condition nor a negation, it is a flag on the block that means one thing on a service and another on a run or task, so it is spelled reload-signal and required here, and the page maps the old form to both. Two things the pages claimed are not true. The kill delay range is 1-300, not 1-60, and stop and reload scripts are no longer run without a timeout. ChangeLog.md keeps its line-based examples. Those sit in historical release entries, and rewriting them in a syntax that did not exist at the time would misdate the format. Signed-off-by: Joachim Wiberg <troglobit@gmail.com>
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General Logging
Syntax: log size:200k count:5
Log rotation for run/task/services using the log sub-option with
redirection to a log file. Global setting, applies to all services.
The size can be given as bytes, without a specifier, or in k, M,
or G, e.g. size:10M, or size:3G. A value of size:0 disables
log rotation. The default is 200k.
The count value is recommended to be between 1-5, with a default 5. Setting count to 0 means the logfile will be truncated when the MAX size limit is reached.
Redirecting Output
The run, task, and service stanzas also allow the keyword log to
redirect stderr and stdout of the application to a file or syslog
using the native logit tool. This is useful for programs that do not
support syslog on their own, which is sometimes the case when running
in the foreground.
The full syntax is:
log:/path/to/file
log:prio:facility.level,tag:ident
log:console
log:null
log
Default prio is daemon.info and default tag is the basename of the
service or run/task command.
Log rotation is controlled using the global log setting.
Example:
service ntpd {
description = "NTP daemon"
log {
priority = "user.warn"
identity = "ntpd"
}
command = "/sbin/ntpd pool.ntp.org"
}
Output Buffering
When using the log block, Finit redirects the service's stdout and
stderr to a pipe connected to a logger process. Programs detect this as
non-interactive output (i.e., isatty() returns false) and typically
switch from line-buffered to fully-buffered mode.
Most well-behaved daemons explicitly flush their output or use syslog
directly, so this is rarely an issue. However, if a service's log
messages appear delayed or batched, you can force line-buffered output
by wrapping the command with stdbuf:
service myservice {
description = "My service"
log { }
command = "/usr/bin/stdbuf -oL /path/to/command"
}
The -oL option forces line-buffered output, and -o0 forces unbuffered
output. See stdbuf(1) for details.
Note
Using
stdbufis rarely necessary. Only use it if you observe actual buffering issues with a specific service.