Hi guys,

syslog.syslog() does not report any error when it fails to send messages to syslog. To reproduce:

Stop sysglog:

sudo /etc/init.d/rsyslog stop

Run than Python code:

import syslog
syslog.syslog('test')

It does not fail.

Strace shows that's it's been unable to send the message to syslog:

connect(3, {sa_family=AF_LOCAL, sun_path="/dev/log"}, 110) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
close(3)                                = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {SIG_DFL, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7fc899e4a8d0}, {0x55e6b0, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7fc899e4a8d0}, 8) = 0
brk(0x20ed000)                          = 0x20ed000
exit_group(0)                           = ?
+++ exited with 0 +++

I've tested all those versions:

echo -e "import syslog\nsyslog.syslog('test')\n" | python3.5
echo -e "import syslog\nsyslog.syslog('test')\n" | python3.4
echo -e "import syslog\nsyslog.syslog('test')\n" | python3.3
echo -e "import syslog\nsyslog.syslog('test')\n" | python3.2
echo -e "import syslog\nsyslog.syslog('test')\n" | python2.7
echo -e "import syslog\nsyslog.syslog('test')\n" | python2.6

Can we please get syslog() to report errors?

Thanks.

Hmm.  Normally the way errors are reported in python is via exception.  personally I would not want syslog raising an exception if it couldn't deliver the message.

I suppose we could have it return a status code.  That would be a new feature, though.

I’ve never used syslog() in Python, but I thought I should point out that the standard Posix API does not do any error reporting either. See <http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/syslog.html>: “The . . . functions shall not return a value. / No errors are defined.”

Ah, in that case there aren't any errors for us to return, so this is moot.