strlog(7)

NAME

strlog — STREAMS log driver

DESCRIPTION

The STREAMS log driver allows user-level processes and STREAMS drivers and modules to perform error logging and event tracing. These tasks are done via a user interface and a kernel interface. Further, the STREAMS log driver delivers error logging and event tracing messages to the Network Tracing and Logging Facility (NetTL) (see nettl(1M), netfmt(1M), and nettlconf(1M)).

The interface that this driver presents to user-level processes is a subset of the ioctl() system calls and STREAMS message formats. These processes can be error loggers, trace loggers, or other user processes, that generate error or event messages. The user interface collects log messages from the log driver, and also generates log messages from user processes.

The driver also accepts log messages from STREAMS drivers and modules in the kernel via its function call interface. The kernel interface enters requests or calls from STREAMS drivers and modules into log messages.

The log messages accepted by the log driver are also delivered to NetTL. NetTL can be used to control which types of messages to log, and to format and filter the logged messages.

Kernel Interface

STREAMS drivers and modules generate log messages by calls to the strlog function.

#include <sys/strlog.h>

int strlog (mid, sid, level, flags, fmt [, value ]...);
short mid;
short sid;
char level;
ushort flags;
char *fmt;
int value;

mid

specifies the STREAMS module ID number for the driver or module submitting the log message.

sid

specifies the sub-ID number of a minor device associated with the STREAMS module or driver identified by mid.

level

specifies a level for screening lower-level event messages from a tracer.

flags

contains several flags that can be set in various combinations. The flags are as follows:

SL_ERROR

The message is for the error logger.

SL_TRACE

The message is for the tracer.

SL_CONSOLE

The message will be printed to the console.

SL_FATAL

Provides a notification of a fatal error.

SL_NOTIFY

Makes a request to mail a copy of a message to the system administrator.

The following are additional flags. These flags are not used by strerr or strace. However, they are used to map STREAMS messages to NetTL messages as described below in STREAMS-NetTL Link section.

SL_WARN

The message is a warning.

SL_NOTE

The message is a note.

fmt

is a printf style format string. This accepts the %x, %l, %o, %u, %d, %c, and %s conversion specifications.

values

are numeric or character arguments for the format string. There is no maximum number of arguments that can be specified.

User Interface

User processes access the log driver with an open() call to /dev/strlog. Each open to the device will obtain a separate stream. After a process opens /dev/strlog, it indicates whether it is an error logger or trace logger. It does this by issuing an I_STR ioctl() system call with the appropriate value in the ic_cmd field of the strioctl structure, and the appropriate data and control information in a trace_ids structure:

struct trace_ids {
    short   ti_mid;
    short   ti_sid;
    char    ti_level;
    short   ti_flags;
};

The values for ic_cmd are:

I_ERRLOG: Indicates an error logger. No trace_ids data is needed.
I_TRCLOG: Indicates a trace logger. A data buffer consisting of an array of one or more trace_ids structures must be included.

If any of the fields of the trace_ids structure contain a value of -1, /dev/strlog will accept whatever value it receives in that field. Otherwise, strlog only accepts messages only if the values of mid and sid are the same as their counterparts in the trace_ids structure, and if the message's level is equal to or less than the level value in the trace_ids structure.

Once the logger process has sent the I_STR ioctl() call, the STREAMS log driver begins to send log messages matching the restrictions to the logger process. The logger process obtains the log messages via the getmsg() system call. The control part of the messages passed in this call includes a log_ctl structure:

struct log_ctl {
    short   mid;
    short   sid;
    char    level;
    short   flags;
    long    ltime;
    long    ttime;
    int     seq_no;
};

The log_ctl structure indicates the mid, sid, and level time in ticks since the boot time that the message was submitted, the corresponding time in seconds since January 1, 1970, and a sequence number. The time in seconds since January 1, 1970 is provided so that the date and time of the message can be easily computed. The time in ticks since boot time is provided so that the relative timing of log messages can be determined.

A user process, other than an error or trace logger, can send a log message to strlog. The driver will accept only the flags and level fields of the log_ctl structure in the control part of the message, and a properly formatted data part of the message. The data part of the message is properly formatted if it contains a null-terminated format string, followed by up to three arguments packed one word each after the end of the string.

A different series of sequence numbers is provided for error and trace logging streams. These sequence numbers are intended to help track the delivery of the messages. A gap in a sequence of numbers indicates that the logger process did not successfully deliver them. This can happen if the logger process stops sending messages for one reason or another (see strace(1M) and strerr(1M) command reference pages for more information). The data part of messages contains text of the format string (null terminated), followed by up to three arguments.

STREAMS-NetTL Link

Both STREAMS error logging and event tracing messages are mapped to NetTL logging messages, and are delivered to NetTL. NetTL classifies messages into four log classes: DISASTER, ERROR, WARNING, and INFORMATIVE. The NetTL log class is determined by the flags according to the following rule:

If (flags & SL_ERROR)           NetTL log class
then
    if (flags & SL_FATAL) ====>  DISASTER
    if (flags & SL_WARN)  ====>  WARNING
    if (flags & SL_NOTE)  ====>  INFORMATIVE
    otherwise             ====>  ERROR
else
    all messages          ====>  INFORMATIVE

As a default, only DISASTER and ERROR messages are logged. This setting can be altered by the nettl command or the nettlconf command (see nettl(1M) and nettlconf(1M)).

The STREAMS subsystem ID used by NetTL is STREAMS.

The messages logged by NetTL facility can be formatted to a readable form by the netfmt command (see netfmt(1M)). The netfmt accepts a filter configuration file, which can be used to filter on STREAMS module ID and sub-ID. The filter configuration file syntax for STREAMS is the following:

STREAMS module_id sub_id

module_id and sub_id can be a decimal number or * as a wild card.

RETURN VALUE

Unless specified otherwise, upon successful completion, the strlog ioctl() commands return a value of 0 (zero). Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned.

ERRORS

If any of the following conditions occurs, strlog driver's ioctl() command sets errno to the corresponding value:

ENXIO: The I_TRCLOG ioctl() call did not contain any trace_ids structures.
ENXIO: The I_STR ioctl() call could not be recognized.

The driver does not return any errors for incorrectly formatted messages that user processes send.

EXAMPLES

The following examples illustrate some basic uses for the strlog interface.

This code example segment shows how a STREAMS module causes a message to be printed to the console:

strlog(TMUX,minor(mydev),0,SL_CONSOLE|SL_FATAL,
    "TMUX driver (minor:%d) suffers resource shortage.",
    minor(mydev));

This code example shows how a user process registers itself with the STREAMS log driver using the ioctl() command, I_ERRLOG.

struct strioctl iocerr:
int logfd;

if ((logfd = open("/dev/strlog", O_RDWR)) == -1) {
    printf("Cannot open /dev/strlog\n");
    exit(1);
}

iocerr.ic_cmd = I_ERRLOG;
iocerr.ic_timout = 0;
iocerr.ic_len = 0;
iocerr.ic_dp = NULL;
ioctl(logfd, I_STR, &iocerr);

This code example shows a user-level process sending a message to the strlog driver.

struct strbuf control, data;
struct log_ctl log;
char *warning = "Fatal error for user level process";
int logfd;

if ((logfd = open("/dev/strlog", O_RDWR)) == -1) {
        printf("Cannot open /dev/strlog\n");
        exit(1);
}

control.len = control.maxlen = sizeof(log);
control.buf = (char *)&lc;

data.len = data.maxlen = strlen(warning);
data.buf = warning;

lc.level = 2;
lc.flags = SL_FATAL|SL_CONSOLE;

putmsg(logfd, &control, &data, 0);

The following examples illustrate how to use the NetTL facility for the STREAMS. See nettl(1M), netfmt(1M), nettlconf(1M) for the general NetTL usage. The STREAMS subsystem ID used by NetTL is STREAMS.

The netfmt accepts a filter configuration file as a command argument. The following filter configuration file example is used to format the messages whose module ID is 1 and sub-ID is 100:

STREAMS    1    100

This filter configuration file example can be used to display all the messages whose module ID is 2 and all the messages whose sub-ID is 101:

STREAMS    2    *
STREAMS    *    101

FILES

/dev/strlog: specifies the clone interface.
<sys/strlog.h>: specifies the header file for streams logging.
<stropts.h>: specifies the header file for STREAMS options and ioctl() commands.