Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 02:52:48 -0400 (EDT) From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@imrss.org> To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@freebsd.org Subject: bin/11987: vacation(1) documentation and error logging both suck Message-ID: <199906020652.CAA17816@imrss.org>
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>Number: 11987 >Category: bin >Synopsis: vacation(1) documentation and error logging both suck >Confidential: no >Severity: non-critical >Priority: low >Responsible: freebsd-bugs >State: open >Quarter: >Keywords: >Date-Required: >Class: doc-bug >Submitter-Id: current-users >Arrival-Date: Wed Jun 2 00:00:02 PDT 1999 >Closed-Date: >Last-Modified: >Originator: Ronald F. Guilmette >Release: FreeBSD 2.2.8-RELEASE i386 >Organization: Internet Mail Relay Services Survey >Environment: Normal >Description: The man page for vacation(1) doesn't say a damn thing about possible non-zero exits codes *or* about the fact that vacation(1) uses syslog (or even what specific facility it uses) to log errors. This sucks because if you have some problem (e.g. screwing up your command line arguments) all you get is a mysterious non-zero exit code, which really means that the people who sent you mail get back some mail bounce containing a totally mysterious "error 1" from sendmail. The documentation should be fixed to specify things that may result in a non-zero exit status *and* also the fact that the program uses syslog(3) to log errors (and it should also mention the name of the specific facility used). Also, is it even a good idea to put errors from this program into the system syslog??? I don't think so. Normal usesr may not have access to that. The errors should instead be written to (for example) ~/.vacation.errors or something like that, so that an ordinary end luser can get to them. >How-To-Repeat: Just use vacation in your .forward file with bad command line args. Good luck figuring out what went wrong unless you have access to the syslog log files *and* unless you had logging for the "user" facility enabled. (I had to look in the source to figure this *&^%$ stuff out.) >Fix: Fix the bleedin' man page and also make errors go to ~/.vacation.errors >Release-Note: >Audit-Trail: >Unformatted: To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
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