I know that the number that's getting logged is the PID of the logger process. But there is NO VALUE WHATSOEVER TO LOGGING THAT PID. The logger process is transient and exists only for long enough to log the message. There is no way of associating the PID of the logger process with the PID of the run-parts script that started it or the PID of the job to which it refers. In short, it's just a useless waste of space, and it therefore shouldn't be logged. If you want to log a useful PID, then add "[$$]" to the end of the log tag and remove the "-i" flag to logger, so that the PID of the run-parts job will be logged. +++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #439799 +++ With recent Rawhide, I see this in my logs: Mar 31 10:01:01 jik2 run-parts(/etc/cron.hourly)[2704: starting inn-cron- nntpsend There are two problems here. The first is that there's a missing close brace after the PID. I think this is because the total length of the process name plus the PID is limited -- I can reproduce the issue by running "logger -i -t foofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoo foo", and also within Sys::Syslog in Perl, so I suspect the limitation is in rsyslog. Having said that, run-parts shouldn't be using a process name that's so long that it's tickling the limitation (either that, or I suppose you could get the rsyslog maintainers to fix the limitation). Independent of that, I see no point whatsoever in having logger log its own PID into the log. It's useless to log the PID of the transient logger process that's logging the message! -- Additional comment from mmaslano on 2008-04-03 07:05 EST -- First: Bug verified. Reassing to rsyslog. Second: that's pid of process. -- Additional comment from rgerhards.com on 2008-04-03 08:03 EST -- I think this is related to this rsyslog bug: http://bugzilla.adiscon.com/show_bug.cgi?id=50 The root problem seems to be that RFC 3164 and the the upcoming syslog RFC series limit the tag length to 32 characters. Rsyslog abides to this limit. There are a number of subtle issue when we process longer tags. It's under consideration, but it must be implemented carefully (the rsyslog bugzilla, I think, already has some info on subtleties - out of my head I remember databases field sizes and potential overrun of non-aware receiver (buffers)). But anyhow: could you post me a sample of what you would expect, that would speed up to process of looking into it as I am right now in the middle of an implementation and would not like to setup a dedicated lab. Thanks, Rainer -- Additional comment from jik.ma.us on 2008-04-03 09:15 EST -- I'm not sure what you're asking for as a "sample". What I would expect is for the tag not to be truncated in the log file. That seems pretty straightforward, and I don't see how a sample would help clarify it. I've added a comment to bug number 52 in the rsyslog bugzilla about this. Can you ask the maintainers of the Red Hat bugzilla to add the rsyslog bugzilla to the external bugzilla references drop-down? Thanks, jik