>logcheck-database was mostly dormant sround that time. im hoping to improve 
>that, but it is a big task and needs some wider
>improvements. So: please bear with it!

I really appreciate your work, thanks.

> however:
>- a bug in a daemon should ideally be reported and fixed in the daemon

Sure.  And I routinely do. But I use logcheck to warn me of serious problems at 
the system level. Detecting user-level daemon bugs is not my priority when 
using logcheck. Especially because when it happens, the deluge of info hides 
the possible serious system-level problems that I am mostly interested into.

>- this may include logging "too much" -- i would suggest discussing with 
>upstream as they may be open to improvements

In the last two years I observed and reported many of those bugs, before hiding 
them behind a custom logcheck rule. Most were acknowledged, some were fixed.

>- you didnt give any examples so not sure how anyone can help you

I can find the relevant bug reports, but that's not the issue I am raising. 
When a random bug in gvfsd (just to mention the latest one) risks filling my 
root partition with multi-GB logs, and logcheck sends me hundred-MB mails full 
of useless stuff, that makes logcheck useless.  In the past, when I detected a 
bug, I kept the email for later, to report the bug when I found the time.  Now 
it happens way too often for me and I am seriously considering shutting it off.

Reporting bugs is voluntary work which I gladly do in my free time.  But if 
this subtracts work time I cannot afford it.

> I had many email tens of megabytes long.
>
>(there's already a request to split the report if it is long)

This is not the problem for me. Logcheck should stop logging after a 
configurable number of lines (for me, that would be around 100, certainly no 
more than 1000), because in my experience that just indicates a bug in the 
logging procedure of some daemon or some missing logcheck filters, and I lose 
my log anyway, as I do not have the time to sift through the mostly useless 
reported stuff.

Additionally, user-level reports should be separated from system-level ones. I 
am not knowledgeable enough to know how to do that if not by single crafted 
local rules, but if I cannot have that I will give up with logcheck. Again, I 
am interested in system-level serious problems, and anything that obfuscates 
that makes logcheck useless and worse.

>If.you wanted to chamge the world, get upstream authors to agree some standard 
>where messges are easier to identify as routine
>and then logcheck could more easily ignore that.  .... i wont hold my breath 
>for thay

Yeah, I feared that the answer would be similar :(

> One cure would be to have logcheck ignore user-level messages, and only care 
> about system-level ones.  Is that possible?
>
>maybe it is possible - how do you define "system-level message"?

Those created by root-owned processes, that would be a good start.  I 
definitely care about Sshd messages, much less about Gvfsd ones, and even less 
by those generated by Telegram running over Snapd.  For some reason, the 
problem has vastly increased after the advent of systemctl.

Again, thank you for your work, that's very much appreciated.  And again, I 
know these problems have always existed, but for some reason they have 
increased a lot and they keep increasing.

Sincerely

-- 
Francesco Potortì (ricercatore)        Mobile: +39.348.8283.107
ISTI - CNR, Pisa, Italy                Web:    http://fly.isti.cnr.it

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