Syslogging must be exclusive to process

[carsonreinke]

No description provided.

[colbygk]

Hello, thank you for the contribution. Could you explain further why you believe that syslog is supposed to be process exclusive? According to POSIX, the syslog routines are supposed to be thread-safe on any system claiming POSIX compatibility. See: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/functions/xsh_chap02_09.html#tag_02_09_01

[carsonreinke]

Probably because multiple threads try to open the syslog which produces an error that it as already been opened. Let me double check and test, but probably openlog means it is thread safe, but not necessarily meaning it won't produce an error if called twice.

[carsonreinke]

Added test, actually forgot something so glad I added it ;)

Tested on 2.1.2p95, without a get an error RuntimeError: syslog already open

[colbygk]

I'd like to investigate this further. Based on my reading of: http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/syslog_003b-vsyslog.html#syslog_003b-vsyslog I'm concerned that this could introduce some other unexpected and unwanted behavior.

[carsonreinke]

Not sure, the basic problem is something like this:

Syslog.open{Thread.new{ Syslog.open{} }.join}

[carsonreinke]

See this also crohr/syslogger#33

I started using my own logger that uses Syslogger gem instead of just Syslog.