[wellylug] hating on the Logwatch

[Spiro Harvey]

> On reviewing this I see that, in error, I misstated myself: I intended
> to say "...because you *DON'T* want to know...", reversing the sense
> of my comment.  Darn.

No, it worked out fine because my brain just registered that as
sarcasm. :)

> Anyway, was there some part of that explanation that wasn't
> comprehensive enough, or was otherwise unclear?  That seems likely,
> given the context and my error.

I was curious about the "model" you didn't like, but it appears
that you see "analysis" as incomplete monitoring, which is
understandable.

For those people who *do* like knowing all the routine stuff their
servers are doing (or not doing) and don't need that to be realtime,
Logwatch makes a passable attempt at scratching that itch. Of course,
like most things, you can modify the pants off it to get what you *do*
want out of it.

> In any case I could equally well state my objection to logwatch as a
> log analysis tool: it focuses on the wrong area, working hard to
> highlight routine and correct operation of the server, without
> effective tools to identify or analyse exceptions.

I use Logwatch on several of my servers, but it's by no means the only
monitoring or analysis that gets done. It's just a quick way of me
getting an overview before caffeine has kicked in. It has (usually by
nature of omission) told me when stuff wasn't working right and led me
to investigate.



-- 
Spiro Harvey
UNIX Specialist, Writer, Editor

http://twiddle.starforge.net.nz
	
Give us this day our garlic bread and lead us not into vegetarianism
but deliver us some pizza.

+++
ATH0
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