Hi WG, I have received notes via private mail telling me there seem to be some existing (and eventually soon upcoming) valid use cases for binary data in syslog. I think there is no point in arguing whether that's fortunate or not. It simply looks like that's the way it is. I do not like the idea of breaking existing use cases for syslog (because that will only lead to implementors ignoring the spec and the story of syslog inconsistencies continues...). As such, I think we need to provide at least some minimal support for it (aka "not outlaw it").
At first, this implies that NUL octets may be present in the message. I propose that we write text that discourages the use of NUL, but allows it if needed. That text should also allow, but discourage, a receiver to modify messages containing NUL. With that, we allow the use case, but do not make it a "show stopper" for implementing compliant software. This would also be pretty much in sync with what we currently find in practice, so it is already expected behaviour. Finally, such text would caution implementors that when NUL octets are present, chancs are high that eventually present digitial signatures will be broken. In my point of view, that's fair and efficient. Chris proposal for #5 (character encoding) also provides an elegant solution for binary data. We can use something like: [enc="binary"] or [enc="base-64"] I do NOT intend to specify this - I think it should be in the scope of a separate document specifying the use of binary data. Then would also be the right time to discuss all issues that arise out of it. For now, I just would like to keep the door open. Finally, I propose to extend Chris format so that the message size can be conveyed. This has been brought up several times and I think a clean solution is now obvious: [enc="utf-8" lang="en" size="MSG-size-in-octets"] MSG-size-in-octets would be the size of the MSG part (just that!) in octets. Counting just the MSG part is sufficient, as the rest of the message consists of fields properly delimited. The size is probably most useful for binary data. Please comment. Rainer _______________________________________________ Syslog mailing list Syslog@lists.ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/syslog
