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Zizzencs
Asked: 2012-08-07 00:15:50 +0800 CST

Why isn't /var/log/maillog written with sync option by default?

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Some syslog implementations on linux (sysklogd, rsyslog) include the following line in their default configuration:

mail.*    -/var/log/maillog

As far as I know the dash sign means that it is not required to do sync() after a log message is written to this logfile.

Why is that and why should we handle maillog differently?

syslog

1 Answers

  1. One possible reason: /var/log/maillog is usually so huge. Put a minus sign before this entry to avoid slow down the system (when syncing the file after every logging).

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