#981728 please document eipp.log

Package:
apt
Source:
apt
Description:
commandline package manager
Submitter:
Marc Haber
Date:
2021-02-03 12:48:14 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#981728#5
Date:
2021-02-03 10:54:23 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

recent apt versions write /var/log/apt/eipp.log.xz. This is not
documented anywhere, codesearch just finds a handful of appearances,
none of which gives any advice.

Please document what the file is, what is written to it, why there is no
log rotation, and how to turn it off ;-)

Greetings
Marc
#981728#10
Date:
2021-02-03 11:02:43 UTC
From:
To:
It's documented in doc/external-installation-planner-protocol.md
(e-i-p-p), which is installed in apt-doc as

 /usr/share/doc/apt/external-installation-planner-protocol.md.gz

What do you think is missing? Did you look at /usr/share/doc/apt after
installing apt-doc?

It contains a dump of the last ordering request, it does not grow. It
will be useful if installating ordering failed for you and we ask you to
please attach eipp.log.xz when you report the bug :-)
#981728#15
Date:
2021-02-03 11:41:02 UTC
From:
To:
zgrep -i eipp.log /usr/share/doc/apt/external-installation-planner-protocol.md.gz
(nothing)

I grepped. Also, the string "log" doesn't show up in any other places
then in the word terminoLOGy. This is impossible to find if you don't
know exactly what you're searching for.

So it is more like Xorg.log.0 than apt.log, right?

How would I turn it off for my servers that will never ever report a bug
against apt (because I have a test environment to reproduce bugs in
before I report them)?

Greetings
Marc
#981728#20
Date:
2021-02-03 11:53:18 UTC
From:
To:
Well sure, it documents the format, not a file location.

Probably needs some fixing some day. Probably after bullseye, we don't
want to invalidate all those translations now I suppose.

Sort of? It's just a dump in one go thing, not a log stream.

$ apt-config dump | grep eipp
Dir::Log::Planner "eipp.log.xz";

Set it to /dev/null just like any other file.

All the concerns raised here also apply to edsp, and well any log file.
#981728#23
Date:
2021-02-03 12:45:09 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Quoting Julian Andres Klode (2021-02-03 12:53:18)

cool. But could we connect the term "eipp.log" and its documentation
*somewhere*? You remember we recently talked about that in #debian-apt and back
then I was just as confused as Marc is right now what /var/log/apt/eipp.log.xz
is about.

This doesn't mean that external-installation-planner-protocol.md has to point
to eipp.log.xz if you say that this file should just document the format. But
somewhere in the docs there should be a find-able connection between
/var/log/apt/eipp.log.xz and external-installation-planner-protocol.md.

That would be great. Thanks!

Thanks, this is great to know!

Yes, fixing those would be awesome as well. :)

Thanks!

cheers, josch