[PATCH v2] Write client (dis)associations to a logfile

Stefan Tomanek stefan.tomanek at wertarbyte.de
Mon Jan 12 15:57:37 EST 2015


Dies schrieb Jouni Malinen (j at w1.fi):

> > Every BSS can have an individual log file, and each entry written contains a
> > timestamp, an indicator whether the client is associating (+) or disaccociating
> > (-), the client and the bss hardware addresses as well as the device and SSID
> > identifiers of the affected network. This makes it easy to join the file with
> > the leases database of an DHCP server like dnsmasq.
> 
> Why would there be need for yet another log file for this? Isn't this
> information available through syslog messages?

Most embedded system do not have persistent log storage (OpenWrt devices);
therefore, the list of client actions moves out of the log buffer quite fast.
And of course syslog messages aren't easily parseble - I am using the written
logfile to correlate client associations with DHCP leases from dnsmasq. And as
a last point, the syslog message of a client associating does not include the
SSID used (which might be interesting on a system servicing multiple networks).
Using multiple files makes it easier to log each network into separate
locations; e.g. logging activity in a guest network to /tmp/assoc_guest while
keeping internal networks away from that log.


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