1. Forum
  2. Usenet
  3. LINUX.DEBIAN.USER

  • Re: Popularity contest files in /var/log

    From Andy Smith@21:1/5 to Bruno Schneider on Fri Oct 25 21:10:01 2024
    Hi,

    On Fri, Oct 25, 2024 at 03:54:58PM -0300, Bruno Schneider wrote:
    I noticed that I have hundreds of files whose names start with "popularity-contest" in /var/log. They don't even seem to be logs.
    They seem to be data that popularity-contest sends away.

    popularity-contest does log to the file /var/log/popularity-contest,
    which is rotated by logrotate.

    However, if popularity-contest experiences a problem during submit then
    it does leave behind a file named like /var/log/popularity-contest.12345
    (and possibly another with .gpg on the end) where "12345" was the
    process ID of the running popularity-contest.

    So if that's what you see, you may wish to look in to why your popularity-contest is consistently failing.

    I would also agree that the system log directory is probably not the
    best place for such files to be left behind, so that's maybe a wishlist
    bug also.

    Thanks,
    Andy

    --
    https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Michel Verdier@21:1/5 to Andy Smith on Sat Oct 26 15:50:01 2024
    On 2024-10-25, Andy Smith wrote:

    On Fri, Oct 25, 2024 at 03:54:58PM -0300, Bruno Schneider wrote:
    I noticed that I have hundreds of files whose names start with
    "popularity-contest" in /var/log. They don't even seem to be logs.
    They seem to be data that popularity-contest sends away.

    popularity-contest does log to the file /var/log/popularity-contest,
    which is rotated by logrotate.

    It's not really logs, it's the packages list sent. For me it should be in something like /var/lib but not in /var/log
    It's rotated by the script /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest using
    savelog and not logrotate

    I would also agree that the system log directory is probably not the
    best place for such files to be left behind, so that's maybe a wishlist
    bug also.

    I opened a bug for this https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1085020
    Feel free to add your point of view

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Andy Smith@21:1/5 to Bruno Schneider on Tue Oct 29 16:40:01 2024
    Hi Bruno,

    On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 11:03:04AM -0300, Bruno Schneider wrote:
    I don't see why HTTP submissions would fail.

    You can't conceive of how a TCP connection over the Internet to a remote
    server managed by someone else could fail? This speaks to a lack of
    imagination I'm afraid. 😀

    I don't know how else I could look into why popularity-contest
    consistently fails.

    If I were you I'd be looking at how often it fails compared to how often
    it is run. Are there files left behind in /var/log for every invocation
    for example.

    I'd probably also try running it manually to see what happens.

    According to /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest this runs "/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest --crond" every day, and that is a
    shell script. You can try just running it as root, i.e.

    # /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest --crond

    and for even more info you can try running it with "bash -x" i.e.

    # bash -x /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest --crond

    I can see in that script that it does log something on failure to HTTP
    POST:

    # try to post the report through http POST
    if [ "$SUBMITURLS" ] && [ "yes" = "$USEHTTP" ]; then
    for URL in $SUBMITURLS ; do
    if setsid $TORIFY /usr/share/popularity-contest/popcon-upload \
    -u $URL -f $POPCON 2>/dev/null ; then
    SUBMITTED=yes
    set_sub
    else
    logger -t popularity-contest "unable to submit report to $URL."
    fi
    done
    fi

    So it'd be interesting to know if it is logging that or if the failure
    is elsewhere.

    If failure is intermittent this is going to be a lot more difficult. For
    what it's worth, some of my servers have had occasional problems
    submitting popcon and I just write that off as Debian popcon server
    being down for maintenance or some other connectivity issue mid way.

    Thanks,
    Andy

    --
    https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)