Red Hat

How the date is formatted is decided by the syslog daemon which is in turn decided by how the daemon is configured. If the customer/clients wants that level of precision, they should reconfigure syslog to that it doesn't truncate the date like that. Doing something else might fix their problem with your application but still leaves that same level of ambiguity for all other logging going on with their system. So even they don't want to fix it another way. Just let them know that it's their syslog daemon that's doing the truncating and not your program.

Different distributions have different types of syslog daemons with sometimes slight differences so this is probably best left at a "You need to fix your syslog then" coming from your end. You can research the steps required for the various daemons and give them as helpful advice but I wouldn't really bother myself with more than that. Most of the popular syslog daemons (like rsyslog and syslog-ng) typically have some sort of "template" directive where the admin can specify the format and the fields they want to show up in their logs. Most daemons will also have an option for setting a default template, which is usually sufficient for making sure files show up in the new format (after a daemon reload).

I say usually because the admin could have some custom configuration going on where they've defined a particular format for the /var/log/maillog file or something. Which is another reason why you're in a better position to make suggestions to the admins rather than try to fix it yourself somehow.

Your solution does seem to be decent enough, but it's probably better for them to have the date on the same line as the message so they don't have to scrollback.

It's good to know that I could change my own time stamp format with syslog, but I have no power to advise the customers to do anything. They just buy the product and have environments all over the spectrum. My present task is just to read the logs and know when the messages were written.

So, I guess you're saying that it's okay to write to the various logs as long as I do it through syslog.

Yeah you'll have to write syslog in order for it to end up in those files. Your idea of just printing a banner is alright I just wouldn't do it since it would be to solve a problem that the customer should already be able to easily fix themselves. Obviously, it's all about what you feel comfortable asking of your customers, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Cheers,
Joel

Thank you for your excellent replies. You know a lot and your answers have been helpful.