       Unix::Syslog -- Perl interface to the UNIX system logger
       ========================================================

Copyright (C) 1999,2000 Marcus Harnisch

Introduction
============

This Module provides access to the system logger available on most
UNIX system via Perl's XSUBs (Perl's C interface).

I wrote this module because of some features I missed in Sys::Syslog
(see FAQ below) and also to do my first steps into the secrets of
Perl's XSUBs.

Copyright and distribution
==========================

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the Artistic License. A copy of the license (see
file Artistic in this directory) must be included in the package.

Installation
============

Unix::Syslog is a Perl module that makes use of XSUBs and hence
requires a working C compiler and library. Execute the following
commands to install this package (`make test' prints the results of a
test suite. Execute `make install' only if the required tests finished
successfully or if you know what you are doing):

perl Makefile.PL
make test
make install

Note: Some tests may fail because the respective constants are not
available on certain systems. You should be able to distinguish these
tests from those that fail because of a malfunction by carefully
reading the output of the test routines.

OS dependent behaviour and portability
======================================

This package uses system specific functions. Programs that uses this
package may not be portable in any case. If you plan to write portable
code using this package, please consult the manuals of the systems you
wish to run the software on. Then modify your program accordingly.

Known bugs
==========

OS	Description				   Workaround
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linux	On systems using glibc2 (<= version 2.1),  None possible.
        setting the log mask has no effect.

Frequently Asked Questions
==========================

1.   What is the benefit from using this module instead of
     Sys::Syslog?

     Sys::Syslog always opens a network connection to the
     syslog service. At least on Linux systems this may 
     lead to some trouble, because

     o   Linux syslogd (from package sysklogd) does not
         listen to the network by default. Most people
         working on stand-alone machines (including me)
         didn't see any reason why to enable this option.
         Others didn't enable it for security reasons.

         OS-independent, some sysadmins may run a firewall
         on their network that blocks connections to port
         514/udp.

     o   By default Linux syslogd doesn't forward messages
         which have already been received from the network to
         other log hosts. There are reasons not to enable
         this option unless it is really necessary.
         Looping messages resulting from a
         misconfiguration may break down your
         (log-)system.

2.   Well, is there any reason to use Sys::Syslog any
     longer?

     Yes! In contrary to Unix::Syslog, Sys::Syslog works
     even if you don't have a syslog daemon running on
     your system as long as you are connected to a log
     host via a network and have access to the syslog.h
     header file of your log host to generate the initial
     files for Sys::Syslog (see Sys::Syslog(3) for
     details). Unix::Syslog only logs to your local syslog
     daemon which in turn may be configured to distribute
     the message over the network.

3.   Are calls to the functions provided by Unix::Syslog
     compatible to those of Sys::Syslog?

     Currently not. Sys::Syslog requires strings to
     specify many of the arguments to the functions, while
     Unix::Syslog uses numeric constants accessed via
     macros as defined in syslog.h. Although the strings
     used by Sys::Syslog are also defined in syslog.h, it
     seems that most people got used to the numeric
     arguments. I will implement the string based calls if
     there are enough people ($min_people > 10**40)
     complaining about the lack of compatibility.

Comments, Bug reports and Suggestions
=====================================

Please direct anything you wish to tell me about this package to the
address given below.

Have fun,
     Marcus Harnisch <marcus.harnisch@gmx.net>
