Debian 12 and csf 14.20 are not good friends

Ah, my fellow digital wanderer, gather ’round the virtual campfire, for I shall regale you with a tale of logs, whispers, and the elusive path to enlightenment in the land of Debian 12.

In the days of yore, when sysadmins roamed the command-line wilderness, they sought solace in the sacred texts—the log files. Among these, the venerable /var/log/messages stood tall, its pages filled with cryptic runes: warnings, errors, and the occasional cosmic hiccup.

But lo! Debian 12, known as Bookworm, arrived like a tempest, sweeping away the old ways. It whispered to the winds, “Behold, systemd-journald shall be our new scribe—a mystical journal that swallows logs whole and spits them out in binary poetry.” And so it was done—the traditional syslog system vanished, leaving sysadmins befuddled and muttering incantations.

Our tale begins with a weary traveler—a freshly installed Debian 12 system. The sysadmin, armed with a keyboard and a heart full of hope, launched CSF, the guardian of firewalls. But alas! An ominous email arrived, bearing dire tidings: “Syslog check failed! Where is /var/log/messages?”

Fear not, dear reader, for I shall reveal the secret path to restore balance. Listen closely, as if the bits themselves whisper:

1. The Quest for var/log/syslog:
   • Invoke the ancient command journalctl. Behold! The journal unfurls its scroll, revealing logs aplenty—process births, daemon mutterings, and the occasional cosmic giggle.
   • To view all logs, chant:
   • journalctl
   • To gaze upon the logs of the syslog unit alone, utter:
   • journalctl -u syslog
   • You can even specify a time range, like so:
   • journalctl --since "1 hour ago"
2. The Rebellion of rsyslog:
   • Some rebels among us yearned for the old ways. They whispered of a secret rite—a ritual involving rsyslog.
   • “Install it,” they said, “and resurrect the ancient logs!”
   • Thus, they chanted:
   • sudo apt-get install rsyslog
   • And in the depths of /etc/rsyslog.conf, they found incantations like:
   • auth,authpriv.* /var/log/auth.log
   • * -/var/log/cron.log
   • * -/var/log/kern.log
   • * -/var/log/mail.log
   • * -/var/log/user.log
   • The logs returned, like lost travelers finding their way home.

And so, my friends, whether you tread the path of journalctl or rekindle the flames of rsyslog, remember this: Logs are our companions, our guides through the labyrinth of systems. And though their forms may change, their stories endure.

And that, my dear audience, is the tale of logs in Debian 12—a saga of mystery, adaptation, and the eternal quest for truth in ones and zeros.