Bug 56191

Summary: logwatch is too noisy
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Michal Jaegermann <michal>
Component: logwatchAssignee: Elliot Lee <sopwith>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.2   
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2001-11-13 19:26:53 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Flags
patch to kill empty reports from logwatch none

Description Michal Jaegermann 2001-11-13 19:25:44 UTC
Description of Problem:
'logwatch.pl' script has a nasty habit of writing empty reports when
there is nothing to report.  This is actually a security issue because
after short while recipients stop paying attention to a constant noise
from logwatch or it gets turned off.

Attached patch can be used to address that particular problem.
If, for some reasons, empty reports are desirable in some situations
then an initial value of a variable '$printing' can be made overridable
on a command line and/or in configuration.

'logwatch' in general reports too many "regular" events ('sendmail'
activities, which can be a great PITA on a machine which handles
reasonable amounts of mail, or regular logins via ssh) and is not
that easy, appearances in /etc/log.d/ to the contrary, to shut it up
but this patch can be at least some beginning.

Comment 1 Michal Jaegermann 2001-11-13 19:26:48 UTC
Created attachment 37443 [details]
patch to kill empty reports from logwatch

Comment 2 Elliot Lee 2001-11-13 19:34:06 UTC
I agree that logwatch is too noisy, but fixes like this that change the basic
output of the program probably should just go upstream to the author
<kirk> and we will need to pick them up at some point.