Being fundamentally lazy, I'd rather not check my syslog files, so was thinking about writting something that would forward specified messages on. Mainly messages from non linux/unix devices logging back. Mainly Cisco kit.

Was thinking creating a named pipe via mknod, then putting that in /etc/syslog.conf so that I could pipe the messages to a script that would, for now, email it to me. I plan SMS later, but I'll get something basic working first.

Couple of questions:
  • Is this sensible? Is there a less processor intesive way of doing it? It's supposedly a production box that my boss gets over excited over. It isn't, but he's windows guy, and as he can't fix it he don't want it touched.
  • For the alterations to syslog.conf - is this good? Anything I can do to cut down the messages it forwards? It's basically the Cisco syslogs I want.
    Code:
    *.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none		|/var/run/syslog_pype
  • Will those messages that the pipe acts on - will they also still get logged in /var/log/messages?
  • My script (have a perl script I can mutilate) that will be forwarding the data to me, does that need to be in the startup file?


Anything useful would be appreciated, I'm basically a user who's always had very good and friendly sys admins in previous roles who've set me up with the toys I've needed in the past, and I don't have them any more ='(