26.5 Pitfalls

• The syslog(3) library uses datagram sockets for passing information to other hosts. As a consequence, there is no guarantee that all logged information will be received by those other hosts.

• When using m4, exercise care to avoid using m4 keywords in unexpected places. For example, attempting to notify a user named dnl in the syslog.conf file causes that name and all the text following on the same line to be lost.

• Prior to V8, sendmail used no record or file locking with the StatusFile (S) option's statistics file. As a consequence, it was not guaranteed to contain 100 percent accurate information. As another consequence, statistics files should never be shared among multiple hosts using remote file systems.

• Care should be exercised in using the -X switch as root. No check is made to ensure that the transaction logging file makes sense. It is possible to make a typo and accidently append transaction data to the wrong file or device.