[squid-users] messages when "squid -k rotate" is run

[Alex Rousskov]

On 2024-11-21 07:29, Matus UHLAR - fantomas wrote:
> I run squid 6 (currently 6.10) on some debian hosts.
> 
> when rotating logs in the night, I get mail about cron output:
> 
> 2024/11/21 00:00:41| Processing Configuration File: 
> /etc/squid/squid.conf (depth 0)
> 2024/11/21 00:00:41| Processing Configuration File: 
> /etc/squid/conf.d/debian.conf (depth 1)
> 2024/11/21 00:00:41| Processing Configuration File: 
> /etc/squid/conf.d/ftplog.conf (depth 1)
> 2024/11/21 00:00:41| Set Current Directory to /var/spool/squid
> 
> This did not happen with squid-5.7
> - is this a bug or a new feature?

IIRC, it is a side effect of a bug fix (or a series of bug fixes, to be 
more precise). Earlier, such messages were dropped or went to cache.log 
(violating locking rules and messing up triage of other complicated bugs 
and misconfigurations).


> Those messages are sent to stderr, not stdout. I can imply redirect the 
> "squid -k rotate" stderr to /dev/null
> but I would like to avoid it when possible - if any error happens, I't 
> like to know about that.

If you are OK with not seeing these particular messages in cache.log and 
on stderr, disable their level-1 reporting using cache_log_message 
directive. The ID of those messages is 68 (see doc/debug-messages.dox 
for IDs of other messages that can be controlled in your Squid).

For example:

     cache_log_message id=68 level=2


IIRC: Core developers failed to reach consensus regarding the best level 
for these messages, so their original "important" level (1) was 
preserved. The argument was "folks are quite often mistaken regarding 
what configuration files their Squids are actually using".


If you want Squid to only report errors to stderr, then you will need to 
  wait for (or orchestrate) the corresponding code changes. Currently, 
Squid defines error as a message with an ERROR: or FATAL: prefix. There 
is no Squid code to treat such messages specially though (yet?). For 
more details, please see 
https://github.com/squid-cache/squid/commit/d816f28de8ba817a98a49f9cfd88ddaa334d7aad

You may be able to emulate the above error detection/handling (including 
its risks related to incorrectly unclassified/unprefixed messages) via a 
shell script. For example, something like this might be a good starting 
point:

     squid -k rotate |& grep -E "FATAL:|ERROR:"

or, with added logging of all stderr messages:

     squid -k rotate |& \
         tee squid-last-rotate.log | \
         grep -E "FATAL:|ERROR:"

However, the above sketches need more work/adjustments to preserve 
"squid -k rotate" exit status code!


HTH,

Alex.