[Mailman-Developers] minor qrunner bug.

[Jon Stevens]

on 5/31/01 12:23 AM, "Chuq Von Rospach" <chuqui@plaidworks.com> wrote:

> 
> Just noticed a minor bug in qrunner. when qrunner starts up, it opens
> the log files, and leaves them open.
> 
> this is fine -- except when the logs get rolled and restarted. When you
> move the logs off and gzip them for storage, qrunner continues writing
> to the (now unlinked) old files, not the new, zeroed ones. So all of the
> qrunner stat and errror and whatever data from the time you roll the
> logs until that instance of qrunner exits  is gone (which, if you've
> modified qrunner lifetime values, can become significant on a busy
> system)
> 
> Since mailman isn't oding much log processing, not a big deal. but for
> sites that are (for instance) charging for list usage, or sites that
> have implemented reporting, there are  potential holes in the data, and
> if they're busy so they have extended qrunner times, significant holes.
> 
> while open/write/close is expensive, given all of the other stuff
> qrunner's doing and the relative lack of logging, I don't think it's
> significant. Alternatively, it can notice the files have been
> moved/zeroed, or perhaps accept a HUP like syslog...

The files should remain open... Because, exactly as you suggest, there is a
sever penalty for open/write/close.

The way that Apache HTTPd works (as well as many other daemons) is that you
move the log files out of the way and then you HUP Apache which will
re-create the log files. Accepting HUP's (or a graceful restart) is
functionality that should be added to qrunner if it isn't there already.

-jon

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