[ale] Localization issues

[JD]

 I'm positive there is a CPAN package for this that will honor the locale and
accept any reasonable input. No need to reinvent that wheel.

Don't know about syslog stuff without some research - sorry.

On 01/27/2014 06:52 PM, Chris Fowler wrote:
> I'm working on some localization issues for a customer.  Typically my device
> localizes in 'C'.   My code has been hard-coded to convert epochs to local time
> in the format of 'DD-MM HH:MM:SS'.   I've made some changes on the 'C' and Perl
> side to read a configuration argument from the XML config that formats the time
> via strftime(3) than the hard coded method.  I went with this because it allows
> more variability than forcing people to enter formats in config like
> 'YYYY-MM-DD'.  The only downside is that they have to enter it like a format
> string.  No problem, tweak documentation.
> 
> My question revolves around a few places where time is created. 
> 
> Case 1: date
> 
> *[root at cs-buford]# date
> Mon Jan 27 23:39:21 UTC 2014*
> 
> If the date is spelled out I do not think that will be a problem.
> 
> *Case 2: syslog-ng
> 
> Jan 27 23:38:30 cs-buford kernel: kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
> Jan 27 23:38:32 cs-buford kernel: kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds*
> 
> Again, it is spelled out so I do not think it is going to be a problem.
> 
> This started when on our web app we displayed time as MM/DD/YY and it confused
> my customer visiting from Africa.  I have the Java programmers working on that
> locale issue and it has been hard.  They work from India so they do not provide
> me input.  They do _exactly_ as I say even if I'm full of it. :P
> 
> I've been googling syslog-ng date and I can not really see a method to change
> the format from the standard BSD format to one I specifiy in syslog.conf.  Is
> this even possible? 
> 
> On date, it is doing exactly as it is supposed to so I am not concerned with
> it.   I just need to locate any perl code tham may be using `date` (from shell
> exec) or POSIX::cmtime() and see if I need to address those. 
> 
> This is an "embedded" system so locales do not really exist.  Time zones are
> limited to a few files in /var/share/zoneinfo so anything outside of those must
> be old skool UTC.   This has not been a problem because of the hundreds I've
> deployed I've set them all the UTC.   
> 
> There are very few OSS programs that write to their own log vs use syslog.  I
> think there is one.  For that I can store the format in /etc/date.fmt and modify
> the OSS program to read from that.  That will keep the OSS out of my library and
> I can simply comment mark the changes vs non-changes like I normally would.
> 
> Does anyone know if it is possible to specify a format for syslog-ng other than
> the BSD standard one?
>