Feature Request: more flexible logging facilities

[Luigi Lauro]

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 07:19, Sam Trenholme <strenholme.usenet at gmail.com> wrote:
> A lot of the design has been inspired by the djbdns suite.  DJB made a
> great DNS server; it's too bad it had a lousy license until 2007 and
> that no official release has been made since 2001 (the last version
> has three security bugs).  DJB really should let someone be the
> official maintainer so it can stay current; I think Russ Nelson would
> make an excellent maintainer for djbdns.

I seriously hope someone skilled comes up and take djbdns into the
world of actively maintaned opensource products. it really deserves
it.

> I don't give timelines for releasing my software.  If you have been
> reading my blog, I have made a lot of progress with the full
> recursion.

I know and I'll check it out as soon as it's out, even if dnscache
already suits quite perfectly (we all know a recursive cache is not
something that should or have changed in the last 10 year... so
dnscache despite the lack of updates it still quite perfect) ;-)

> Logging is done by duende, which is a very simple 252-line C program.
> MaraDNS uses stdout for all messages; these messages are caught by
> duende, which logs them using syslog.
>
> It's open source software; you are free to modify duende (or pay me or
> anyone else to modify duende if you don't want to get your hands dirty
> with programming) to log messages in a manner that works for you.
>
> tail -f /var/log/messages | grep maradns
>
> I presume FreeBSD's syslog daemon does fflush() after logging a message.

I know, but still, it's quite weird to see MaraDNS so full-featured,
and still miss what 99,9999999999% of the opensource project give as
'standard': a flexible logging configuration.

It would be useful to be able to choose at least the syslog facility,
and I think this can be done easily, if the 'logging to file' involves
get rid of duende to switch to something more flexible.

I know its OPS and i could do this myself, but I've little C skills
(actually not, but they are really rusted), and I thought it would be
a no brainer for such an active and present maintainer as you are.

Mine was only a suggestion, feel free to do it whatever you want of it ^_^

> See above about duende.  The authoritative half of MaraDNS is in a
> deep freeze right now and it's very unlikely I'll implement features
> besides finishing up the BIND zone file conversion Python script
> unless fortune smiles on me and Oracle or someone else decides to pay
> me to work full-time on MaraDNS.

I understand.

> Yes, and I'm sorry I don't have time to implement features requests
> people give me on the internet for fun and for free.  I'm married,
> and, yeah, my wife keeps telling me I need to get paid if I'm going to
> continue to work on MaraDNS, and I agree with her.
>
> I'm getting older and my youthful days of developing open source
> software will soon be behind me.  Marriage is nice, but I have to give
> up some things to be the best possible husband for my beautiful wife.
>
> I have posted about this on the blog.  For example, from
> http://maradns.blogspot.com/search/label/freetards :
>
> People who think open-source software (OSS) makes it possible for all
> content to be free don’t understand how OSS changes the relationship
> between the developer and the user. A lot of people think an OSS
> program is like a commercial program, but free, and that they can ask
> for features or get support for free, and it gets pretty tiring to
> have people email me asking for free support, even though I make it
> clear that I don't provide free email support for my program.
>
> The thinking behind OSS is that I donate some of my coding time and
> effort to the greater community. In return, people are free to
> contribute bug fixes or improvements to the program, or supply support
> on the mailing list. For example, someone wanted better IPv6 support,
> supplied patches, and now MaraDNS has good IPv6 support. Another
> person wanted better Windows service support, and supplied patches to
> make MaraDNS’ new recursive core be a full Windows service. Other
> people answer user's questions on the mailing list or translate
> documentation. Webconquest very generously provides me a free Linux
> shell account and hosting for the web site.

Totally agree on that.

In fact I didn't pretend or expect something, I just wanted to
contribute to this wonderful opensource project by giving some
suggestions and hints on how to improve it.

Maybe you will take them and implement them, maybe not, maybe someone
else will, maybe I will myself... who knows?

But suggestions on how to improve is the real fuel of the quality of
opensource software, and I wanted to help, just that ^_^

> Thank you for your kind words.  MaraDNS 2.0 will probably be my last
> release; I will continue to maintain the software with bug fixes and
> routine maintenance such as updating the root servers as needed. If
> someone else who is a skilled C programmer becomes willing to carry
> the torch, I will allow them to be the maintainer for MaraDNS 3.0 and
> other future releases; I will remain responsible for bug fixes in the
> 1.4 and 2.0 branches of MaraDNS unless I get hit by a bus.

I hope to see 2.0 soon then.

Keep up the wonderful work! ^_^

--
Luigi Lauro