[kea-dev] Requirements for the Logging and Diagnostics in Kea

[Marcin Siodelski]

Hi All,

One of the goals for the Kea 0.9.2. release is "Logging and Diagnostics 
Improvements". This includes a number of little improvements and tweaks 
to the existing logging system, but some of the possible enhancements 
are much more significant than this.

I have created the requirements document 
http://kea.isc.org/wiki/DiagnosticsRequirements for "Logging and 
Diagnostics Improvements", which is meant to summarize the requirements 
mentioned in different discussions we've had so far.

This document is still a "draft" because there is the outstanding 
requirement which we're discussing internally and I am not sure if there 
is a reliable way to implement it. That is:

"Kea MUST provide an utility to automatically locate a core file after 
server crash to prevent future server runs from overriding the core file."

Note that not only does this requirement provide a way to prevent 
override of the core file but it also allows for having a convenient way 
to put all useful debugging information in a single place (The same 
utility could copy the current configuration file, lease file, log file 
etc).

However, I am not familiar with any standard and reliable way to locate 
the core files. On Linux I know that there is a core_pattern file but it 
may redirect the core file to a program, rather than save it in the 
specific location on the disk. In that case, you don't really know where 
the core dump goes.


Please review all other requirements in the document and provide your 
feedback.

Thanks,

Marcin Siodelski

DHCP SW Engineer
ISC