Syslog::Logger

Syslog::Logger is a Logger work-alike that logs via syslog instead of to a file. You can use Syslog::Logger to aggregate logs between multiple machines.

By default, Syslog::Logger uses the program name ‘ruby’, but this can be changed via the first argument to Syslog::Logger.new.

NOTE! You can only set the Syslog::Logger program name when you initialize Syslog::Logger for the first time. This is a limitation of the way Syslog::Logger uses syslog (and in some ways, a limitation of the way syslog(3) works). Attempts to change Syslog::Logger’s program name after the first initialization will be ignored.

Example

The following will log to syslogd on your local machine:

require 'syslog/logger'

log = Syslog::Logger.new 'my_program'
log.info 'this line will be logged via syslog(3)'

Also the facility may be set to specify the facility level which will be used:

log.info 'this line will be logged using Syslog default facility level'

log_local1 = Syslog::Logger.new 'my_program', Syslog::LOG_LOCAL1
log_local1.info 'this line will be logged using local1 facility level'

You may need to perform some syslog.conf setup first. For a BSD machine add the following lines to /etc/syslog.conf:

!my_program
*.*                                             /var/log/my_program.log

Then touch /var/log/my_program.log and signal syslogd with a HUP (killall -HUP syslogd, on FreeBSD).

If you wish to have logs automatically roll over and archive, see the newsyslog.conf(5) and newsyslog(8) man pages.