Preferred log location with ISC copr package

[Michał Kępień]

Hi John,

> I'm considering changing one of my BIND installations to use the
> experimental ISC-provided packages:
>   https://www.isc.org/blogs/bind-9-packages/
> 
> With these packages, what it the recommended location for log files?

By default, ISC packages try to mimic what stock RHEL/CentOS BIND
packages are doing, i.e. named logs are written to the Software
Collection counterpart of /var/named/data/named.run, i.e.
/var/opt/isc/isc-bind/named/data/named.run.  However, this is just a
default and you are in no way limited to that.

> A directory was created as part of the package installation:
>   /var/opt/isc/isc-bind/log/

Correct, this directory is a part of the standard Software Collection
runtime which is created at package build time according to macros
provided by Red Hat.

> Since I'm new the "Software Collection" paradigm, I don't know if this is an
> acceptable location for my operational logs.

It is as acceptable as any other location to which named has write
access.  The default path I mentioned above is set up automatically upon
package installation; if you would like to log to a different file, you
will have to take care of ensuring proper filesystem permissions and
SELinux labelling yourself.  You can also consider logging to a syslog
daemon and configuring it to your liking as an alternative to logging
directly to a file.

> Is that location going to get
> trashed when I install the next update?

We do our best to ensure our packages do not trash anything in an
irreversible manner.  Thus, this should not be an issue.  You can try it
out yourself, e.g. by installing BIND from the isc/bind Copr first, then
adding the isc/bind-dev Copr as well and finally running "yum update".

Hope this helps,

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Kępień