[svlug] Re: syslog() gets blocked?

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 6 Jan 2003 23:07:00 +0200
Ira Abramov <lists-svlug at ira.abramov.org> wrote:
> Quoting J C Lawrence, from the post of Mon, 06 Jan:

>> ... it has had all the flavours of a gethostbyname() (or similar)
>> timeout to me.

> unbelievably, that was the problem.

Well, colour me purple and umm, yeah.

> a fix to resolv.conf did the trick.

Which approach did you take?

> 1. why would syslog try to do reverse resolving on a unix socket (not
> TCP or UDP)

Looking up localhost?

> 2. why it ignored /etc/hosts with the localhost entry.  3. why should
> the CLIENT block on this? the log line should be thrown in the pipe
> and the syslog would read it once it got back from gethostbyname()...

My guess (unchecked, please feel free) is that the implementation of
syslog(3) calls gethostbyname.

>> ObNote: Check which version of syslogd you're using.  syslog-ng is
>> strongly recommended, especially for log-hosts.

> yeah, yeah, I told the system team that since I started studying the
> system at this new job... it will take a while to change their design
> :)

Been there.  Know that one.

--
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.