[Feature Request] Disable RSYNC

[camphamp]

Noting:
(1) qwinz issue #173 with SD wear and tear.
(2) I very rarely care about log entries from before my last boot.

I would like to experiment starting with an empty /var/log at every boot and no longer syncing the /var/log directory to disk.

It would be ideal to have a configurable item in your config to toggle sync ON/OFF.

Is there an easy or recommended way to do this outside of your system (like a symlink of log.hdd -> /dev/null or commenting out the rsync commands (I cannot even find where they live)?

Thanks for your tool and you thoughts and consideration for this feature!

[Sailing74]

What would you be missing if you simply setup /var/log as a RAM disk, just an entry in fstab?

[camphamp]

It would provide the admin with an option to toggle log persistence "ON", for those cases when they need to troubleshoot a recurring crash event or something that only comes up over longer periods (weeks/months).

As mentioned, this is rare occasion for me, but if I need to collect logs between boots then I'd use this tool just for that facility.

Additionally, there is also the possibility (hopefully very rare) that a program will require some persistence of log files for their own consumption or log file creation/permission issues or a directory structure requires manual setup (I have read that Apache web server has this type of log directory structure sensitivity).

So, I guess I like the idea of complete log preservation until everything is humming along smooth and sound and then just flick it off to save disk wear. That is my use case.

[bughunter2]

What would you be missing if you simply setup /var/log as a RAM disk, just an entry in fstab?

Setting up a /var/log entry as a RAM disk is not enough, because the RAM disk should be initialized with a copy of the existing log files in order to preserve directory structures that were created by package scripts, such as exim4 and nginx. Otherwise, such services will fail to start. Hence, something like log2ram is very useful for this purpose.

And that's why it would be a very useful feature to allow disabling both rsync and cp completely for people who like to use log2ram but prevent ANY kind of wear and tear on their storage devices.

I realize that completely disabling saving logs to disk is actually a different feature request. I can file a feature request for that if needed?

Workaround for those who want that feature now:

1. Edit the /usr/local/bin/log2ram script.
2. Find the sync_to_disk function.
3. Change it to something like this:

sync_to_disk() {
    is_safe
    journald_logrotate
    echo 'WARNING: Log synchronization is disabled [custom log2ram patch].' >&2
}

WARNING: This completely disables synchronization. With this change, log2ram will NEVER synchronize to disk. Thus, even if the system is shutting down, logs are NOT saved. But if that's what you want, this workaround is for you.