[ClusterLabs] Feedback wanted: using the systemd message catalog

[Ken Gaillot]

Hi all,

The systemd journal has a feature called the message catalog, which
allows "journalctl -x" to show extended troubleshooting hints along
with log messages. Apparently a similar feature is familiar to many
Windows administrators.

So far, I've only found systemd itself that uses the feature. As an
example, if the usual log message is a one-liner about httpd dumping
core, with journalctl -x it would look like:

 -- fc2e22bc6ee647b6b90729ab34a250b1
 Subject: Process 1234 (httpd) dumped core
 Defined-By: systemd
 Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
 Documentation: man:core(5)
 Documentation: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/catalog/fc2e22bc6ee647b6b90729ab34a250b1

 Process 1234 (httpd) crashed and dumped core.

 This usually indicates a programming error in the crashing program and
 should be reported to its vendor as a bug.

There is currently a proposed pull request ( 
https://github.com/ClusterLabs/libqb/pull/433 ) to add support for this
to libqb's logging API, which the rest of the cluster software could
use.

As an example, if someone forcibly uploads a CIB with syntax errors,
Pacemaker will currently log "The cluster is mis-configured - shutting
down and staying down" and exit. We could make it so that the
journalctl -x entry tells the user how to use crm_verify to figure out
what's wrong, how to use cibadmin to correct any errors, and a link to
Pacemaker Explained as a configuration reference.

This would involve considerable work for developers, so I'm curious how
many users would find this useful and would use it. Especially if most
of the time you used journalctl -x, there was no extended information,
but occasionally there was.
-- 
Ken Gaillot <kgaillot at redhat.com>