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I have a program which needs syslog to run to correctly work. I am working in an Alpine container with version 3.16.0. As I'm getting multiple errors from the program (weewx), I understood that syslog is not running in the container, so I researched how I should run it, with little success.

After installing openrc (apk add --no-cache openrc) I tried to add it as a service as it is suggested on the Alpine wiki, however after running rc-update add syslogd boot I got this error:

rc-update: service `syslogd' does not exist

I don't have a lot of experience with services, so I decided to ask. What should be the right approach to have syslogd run as a daemon when the container is launched? Right now to get it to run I launch it manually, however it would be great to have it run automatically.

Thanks!

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2 Answers 2

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I just ran into this and am a little disappointed that this has been unanswered for 7 months and isn't already covered by the Alpine wiki.

  1. The command is actually rc-update add syslog boot, not syslogd
  2. If you haven't already, on Alpine < 3.17, you need to add openrc and busybox-initscripts with apk add openrc busybox-initscripts. On Alpine >= 3.17, you can add a single package apk add busybox-openrc
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I went through some strange ritual to somehow start system logging. I needed to track authorization through the PAM service.

My commands:

run --privileged ... image

Commands in container

apk add syslog-ng busybox-openrc rc-update add syslog boot rc-status touch /run/openrc/softlevel rc-service syslog start rc-service syslog status

Then I tracked the logs in the file /var/log/messages

(UPDATE)
Can run in unprivileged mode

Dockerfile

RUN <<EOF apk add syslog-ng busybox-openrc rc-update add syslog boot EOF

entrypoint.sh

rc-status touch /run/openrc/softlevel rc-service syslog start rc-service syslog status

docker exec -it container tail -f /var/log/messages

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