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+# Syslogd Implementation
+
+A tiny syslogd implementation `usyslogd` is provided as part of this package.
+
+It opens a socket in `/dev/log`, processes syslog messages and forwards the
+parsed message to a modular backend interface.
+
+Currently, there is only one implementation of the backend interface that dumps
+the log messages into files in the processes working directory (by default
+`/var/log`).
+
+A simple log rotation scheme has been implemented.
+
+
+## Security Considerations
+
+By default, the daemon switches its working directory to `/var/log`. The
+directory is created if it doesn't exist and the daemon always tries to
+change its mode to one that doesn't allow other users (except group members)
+to access the directory.
+
+If told to so on the command line, the daemon chroots to the log directory.
+
+By default, the daemon then tries to drop privileges by switching to user and
+group named `syslogd` if they exist (any other user or group can be specified
+on the command line; doing so causes syslogd to fail if they don't exist).
+
+
+On a system that hosts accounts for multiple users that may be more or less
+trusted, one may consider only giving system services access to the syslog
+socket and not allowing regular users. Otherwise, a user may flood the syslog
+daemon with messages, possibly leading to resource starvation, or (in the case
+of size limited log rotation outlined below) to the loss of otherwise critical
+log messages. Since this is not the primary target of the Pygos system, such
+a mechanism is not yet implemented.
+
+In case of a system where only daemons are running, the above mentioned
+security measure is useless. If a remote attacker manages to get regular user
+privileges, you already have a different, much greater problem. Also, a remote
+attacker would have to compromise a local daemon that already has special
+access to the syslog socket, which is again your least concern in this
+scenario.
+
+
+## Logrotation
+
+The backend can be configured to do log rotation in a continuous fashion (i.e.
+in a way that log messages aren't lost), or in a way where it drops old
+messages. Furthermore, the backend can be configured to automatically do a log
+rotation if a certain size threshold is hit.
+
+If the `usyslogd` receives a `SIGHUP`, it tells the backend to do log rotation.
+
+In the case of the size threshold, the backend is expected to do the rotation
+on its own if the predetermined limit is hit.
+
+
+## File Based Backend
+
+The file based backend writes log messages to files in the current working
+directory (by default `/var/log`), named either after the ident string (if
+specified) or the facility name.
+
+Log messages are prefixed with an ISO 8601 time stamp, optionally the facility
+name (unless part of the file name), the log level and the senders PID. Each
+of those fields is enclosed in brackets.
+
+Log rotation in a continuous fashion means renaming the existing log file to
+one suffixed with the current time stamp. Overwriting old messages renaming
+the log file by appending a constant `.1` suffix.
+
+
+## Default Configuration
+
+The default service configuration limits the log file size to 8 KiB and
+configures the daemon to overwrite old messages when rotating log files,
+effectively limiting the amount of log data to 16 KiB per source or facility.
+
+The intended use case in the Pygos system is logging to a ramdisk without
+exhausting available memory.
+
+
+## Possible Future Directions
+
+In the near term future, the daemon probably requires more fine grained control
+over logging such as setting a minimum log level or a way to configure limits
+per facility or service.
+
+In the medium term future, extended resource control using c-groups might be
+a possibility.
+
+Future directions may include adding other backends, such as forwarding the
+log messages to a central server, for instance using syslog over UDP/TCP or
+using the front end of some time series database.