syslog + i18n

[Jonathan Sergent <sergent+gnome kgb etla net>]

In message <199812160344.WAA11892@rwf.lms.mit.edu>, "Sergey I. Panov" writes:
 ] PS: I played with logview -- it works, but it get confused over bug in
 ] syslog which only shows up on system with localization. logview does
 ] not tolerate things like 4UZ and dEK instead of Dec:
 ] ...
 ] Dec 13 04:28:23 sipan dhcpcd[167]: got in BOUND state 
 ] 4UZ 13 04:44:49 sipan PAM_pwdb[9276]: (su) session opened for ...
 ] ...
 ] dEK 13 11:53:04 sipan PAM_pwdb[9574]: (su) session opened for ...
 ] ...
 ] Dec 13 14:08:34 sipan kernel: Swansea University Computer ...
 ] ...
 ] 
 ] I think I have workaround that works for me, but should not someone
 ] fix syslog instead?
 ] 

syslog messages should never get internationalized before being sent to
syslog, and syslogd should be running in the C locale and doing the
date stamps accordingly.  Whichever program is doing this is wrong.

The reason for this is that if you have a system with multiple locales
installed and users with multiple locales, and you internationalized
syslog messages, you could end up with a file where some lines are in
one character set and other lines are in another character set, with
no useful way for the computer to distinguish which lines are in which
character set.  Even if it could, there just aren't tools out there 
that can handle text files in more than one character set.


-- 
Jonathan Sergent / sergent@io.com