Solved Do I need to remove syslog if rsyslog is installed?

[CaffeineAddict]

Syslog is the default logging service in debian but I've installed and configured rsyslog for logging purposes, however now I have both syslog and rsyslog services running.

This made me wonder if syslog isn't redundant and whether I should uninstall it?

 

[dos2unix]

It doesn't hurt anything to have them both running, but there is no reason for both.
rsyslog is a newer newer and easier to setup a "remote" syslog server.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

It doesn't hurt anything to have them both running, but there is no reason for both.
rsyslog is a newer newer and easier to setup a "remote" syslog server.

thanks, is there anything I need to do or configure prior uninstalling syslog?

If I uninstall syslog, rsyslog will take over everything that syslog did automatically?

 

[osprey]

Syslog is the default logging service in debian but I've installed and configured rsyslog for logging purposes, however now I have both syslog and rsyslog services running.

This made me wonder if syslog isn't redundant and whether I should uninstall it?

Wasn't syslog replaced by rsyslog? Debian Package Tracker looks to be able only to find rsyslog. In relation to "syslog" it reports: "Package syslog does not exist". It would be of interest to know if a separate package of syslog or syslogd is actually installed on your system, or is it all from rsyslog or some link to rsyslog, or something similar.

On this machine, systemctl reports both syslog and rsyslog services, but they are both tied to rsyslog, without any separate syslog package being installed:

[tom@min ~]$ systemctl status rsyslog.service
● rsyslog.service - System Logging Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2024-01-23 07:21:12 AEDT; 1h 27min ago
TriggeredBy: ● syslog.socket
Docs: man:rsyslogd(8)
man:rsyslog.conf(5)
https://www.rsyslog.com/doc/
Main PID: 836 (rsyslogd)
Tasks: 4 (limit: 18693)
Memory: 3.3M (peak: 3.8M)
CPU: 71ms
CGroup: /system.slice/rsyslog.service
└─836 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n -iNONE

Jan 23 07:21:12 min systemd[1]: Starting rsyslog.service - System Logging Service...
Jan 23 07:21:12 min rsyslogd[836]: imuxsock: Acquired UNIX socket '/run/systemd/journal/sysl>
Jan 23 07:21:12 min rsyslogd[836]: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="8.2312.0" x-pid="8>
Jan 23 07:21:12 min systemd[1]: Started rsyslog.service - System Logging Service.


[tom@min ~]$ systemctl status syslog.service
● rsyslog.service - System Logging Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2024-01-23 07:21:12 AEDT; 1h 28min ago
TriggeredBy: ● syslog.socket
Docs: man:rsyslogd(8)
man:rsyslog.conf(5)
https://www.rsyslog.com/doc/
Main PID: 836 (rsyslogd)
Tasks: 4 (limit: 18693)
Memory: 3.3M (peak: 3.8M)
CPU: 71ms
CGroup: /system.slice/rsyslog.service
└─836 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n -iNONE

Jan 23 07:21:12 min systemd[1]: Starting rsyslog.service - System Logging Service...
Jan 23 07:21:12 min rsyslogd[836]: imuxsock: Acquired UNIX socket '/run/systemd/journal/sysl>
Jan 23 07:21:12 min rsyslogd[836]: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="8.2312.0" x-pid="8>
Jan 23 07:21:12 min systemd[1]: Started rsyslog.service - System Logging Service.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

Wasn't syslog replaced by rsyslog? Debian Package Tracker looks to be able only to find rsyslog. In relation to "syslog" it reports: "Package syslog does not exist". It would be of interest to know if a separate package of syslog or syslogd is actually installed on your system, or is it all from rsyslog or some link to rsyslog, or something similar.

On this machine, systemctl reports both syslog and rsyslog services, but they are both tied to rsyslog, without any separate syslog package being installed:

Yeah indeed!
Sadly I didn't run these commands before installing rsyslog to know if the syslog service belonged to syslogd package.

apt-cache search syslogd finds rsyslog, it looks like syslog doesn't exist even in debian's repo, strange.

 

[osprey]

Yeah indeed!
Sadly I didn't run these commands before installing rsyslog to know if the syslog service belonged to syslogd package.

apt-cache search syslogd finds rsyslog, it looks like syslog doesn't exist even in debian's repo, strange.

There was a package called "syslog" in debian once some time ago, and online one can still find one, but it's no longer in debian and so it would be redundant to install such an external syslog package, say under /usr/local, because it would likely be inferior in capabilities to the current rsyslog. I wondered whether you may have done that from the text in your post #1, but not so.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I wondered whether you may have done that from the text in your post #1, but not so.

No, I didn't install syslog but I recall from debian docs (can't find it) that systemd-journald is default logging facility in debian.

I also found that syslog in debian is only configuration but not the package itself:

Debian comes with a standard syslog configuration (in /etc/syslog.conf) that logs messages to the appropriate files depending on the system facility.

4.13. The importance of logs and alerts

I think this solves it, thank you very much!