[pve-devel] [PATCH manager] ui: node: system: avoid using 'Syslog'

[Esi Y]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 10:25:22AM +0100, Dietmar Maurer wrote:
> > while I don't mind (at all!) that that part of the UI/API is labelled syslog (I don't think it's hard to understand that it gives you the system logs of that node, and "syslog" is a bit like "Kleenex" in that regard ;)) - I do have to disagree here ;) journald does a lot more than just collecting syslog(3) messages - it also collects stdout/stderr of systemd-managed services (unless configured in a non-default fashion), messages explicitly sent to it over its own interface (like those by systemd ;)), and messages from the kernel (like dmesg), including the audit subsystem..
> 
> IMHO, those are just Implementation details of systemd init..

I think it's relevant, it's not like "Kleenex" because there would be no need for imjournal in rsyslog or systemd-journal-remote if those were all just "tissues".

I saw it turned here into discussion whether such little semantics topic is worth tranlating into multitude of languages, I agree it is NOT. But if that is the concern the best is to call it simply "Log" as it is already under "System" under a node (and not Datacentre as Fabian mentioned in the forum).

And yes it is not hard to understand it gives one journalctl -f of the node if one knows all this already. And yes it is true even journal collects syslog(3) calls and there's even syslog format one could mention, but the GUI people are not libc or RFC people. The problem is communication of random people to the rest on e.g. forum.

The whole reason for bringing it up was not that the name is semantically strictly incorrect, it is ambigious at the least however. Admins (giving advice) do indeed collect logs with a syslog server (or other compatible solution) and when there's a discussion and some people (looking for advice) looked at the PVE GUI and report they saw something "in syslog" (when the service is not even installed anymore) it is confusing. They would have said "journal" if that's what they saw there. Log might not sound specific enough but the GUI has the mentioned context - node / system, which is precise enough. Also since there's no other logs in GUI, it's not ambigious. Seeing something "in syslog" implies at the least it was collected and travelled over UDP 514 (valuable piece of information in and of itself).

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