The officially official Devuan Forum!

Eeqmcsq

Member

Registered: 2017-09-19

Posts: 53  

[SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

I mentioned this problem in the RAID auto start thread, but it may have gotten lost in the deluge of testing. Since this problem isn't related to RAID, I'm creating a new post to track this problem.

- Installer iso: devuan_excalibur_6.0-20250823_amd64_netinstall.iso
- Download directory: https://files.devuan.org/devuan_excalib … aller-iso/

* Problem

After installing the netinstall to my PC, /var/log/syslog is not found. I discovered that the package rsyslog isn't installed. Is this a problem with the installer, or is rsyslog no longer installed by default? If not, what logs would I look at?

Note that in the Excalibur live desktop, rsyslog IS installed.

abower

Member

Registered: 2024-04-19

Posts: 11  

Re: [SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

is rsyslog no longer installed by default?

That's right. So right now you have no logs.

You can install rsyslog manually. It's been forked in Devuan to fix broken logrotation with sysvinit. It's only partially fixed for runit.

If you want to try another logging daemon where the Debian maintainer hasn't deliberately made it inoperable without systemd, there's a new team page listing the alternatives: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Logging

Eeqmcsq

Member

Registered: 2017-09-19

Posts: 53  

Re: [SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

OK, thanks for the reply. I have installed rsyslog manually on my Excalibur PC, and a quick check shows no obvious problems. I wanted to make sure it wasn't an oversight in the Excalibur installer.

I'll marked this as solved, since it's a known issue.

abower

Member

Registered: 2024-04-19

Posts: 11  

Re: [SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

Known by us but I wonder if having no syslog logger by default is a Devuan oversight (for Debian since bookworm they have relied on systemd-journald). I think they can maybe override the 'priority' field of one preferred logger without having to fork the package itself. I suggest it's worth a Devuan bug report.

abower

Member

Registered: 2024-04-19

Posts: 11  

Re: [SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

I have confirmed that a fresh installation doesn't pull in a logging daemon and neither do the ssh-server, console-productivity or web-server tasksel tasks.

Here's the official list:

root@devuan:~# apt-get install system-log-daemon
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package system-log-daemon is a virtual package provided by:
  syslog-ng-core 4.8.1-5
  socklog-run 2.1.0+repack-6
  rsyslog 8.2504.0-1devuan1
  inetutils-syslogd 2:2.6-3
  busybox-syslogd 1:1.37.0-6
You should explicitly select one to install.

I think this merits a bug - Eeqmcsq, will you raise one (preferrable, as you experienced the issue for real), or shall I?

Last edited by abower (2025-08-29 10:01:41)

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,695  

Re: [SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

I don't recall exactly what the problem was, but some packages had to be left out of debootstrap builds of excalibur early on. Search forum for 'rsyslog logrotate cron' and you'll find a few posts about it. The live iso build is patched to add logrotate and rsyslog later in the build. The installer isos are going to get a fix (maybe already did) for that.

abower

Member

Registered: 2024-04-19

Posts: 11  

Re: [SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

Hi fsmithred,

I don't recall exactly what the problem was, but some packages had to be left out of debootstrap builds of excalibur early on. Search forum for 'rsyslog logrotate cron' and you'll find a few posts about it. The live iso build is patched to add logrotate and rsyslog later in the build. The installer isos are going to get a fix (maybe already did) for that.

I don't know about the live ISOs - that is a different matter, I think.

For my test I used netinst (installer-iso, 23 August) so it's a question more of what packages are 'standard' priority (I think) rather than which packages were on the ISO (sorry my knowledge in this area is weak).

Now that rsyslog is not special perhaps Devuan could select its own preferred logger, that might be more init-freedom-friendly, from the options available without bias towards what used to be the Debian default? Of course it may turn out that rsyslog is still the best choice - I don't know!

Am I right in thinking that our 'DAK' can have overrides that change the priority of packages and setting that for one of the Provides of system-log-daemon would do the trick? Or maybe that doesn't work because we aren't rebuilding the packages, in which case does the installer also have a way of promoting a package into the basic task selection?

rbit

Member

Registered: 2018-06-12

Posts: 73  

Re: [SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

Thank you for the report.  rsyslog will be included in the next netinstall iso, probably later today or tomorrow.

Eeqmcsq

Member

Registered: 2017-09-19

Posts: 53  

Re: [SOLVED] Excalibur net install 20250823 not installing rsyslog

I can file the bug. But since the next netstall iso will include rsyslog and is coming soon, I'll test that netinstall build first. If rsyslog is confirmed to be installed, I'll skip the bug report.