[X2go-dev] auth.log growing...

[John A. Sullivan III]

On Tue, 2010-08-17 at 22:55 +0200, Mike Gabriel wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> on Tue May 26 11:40:43 CEST 2009 you had this request to the x2go-dev list:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > After installing X2go I see my auth.log is growing.
> > I see this:
> > ---------
> > May 25 06:53:22 server sudo:     root : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root
> > ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/x2gopgwrapper listsessionsroot server
> > May 25 06:53:22 server su[17628]: Successful su for postgres by root
> > May 25 06:53:22 server su[17628]: + ??? root:postgres
> > May 25 06:53:22 server su[17628]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened
> > for user postgres by (uid=0)
> > May 25 06:53:22 server su[17628]: pam_unix(su:session): session closed
> > for user postgres
> > May 25 06:53:23 server CRON[16311]: pam_unix(cron:session): session
> > closed for user root
> > May 25 06:53:28 server sudo:     root : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root
> > ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/x2gopgwrapper listsessionsroot server
> > (...)
> > -------
> >
> > I did a "/etc/init.d/x2goserver stop" and that helps.
> > And I can still login on the X2go server!
The x2goserver daemon isn't actually the server; it starts the
x2gocleansessions daemon which cleans up after sessions in various
states every five seconds as you note below.  The actual connections to
the server are all driven from the client via ssh by calling various
scripts on the server.
> >
> > I see it is checking the database, but I don't understand why exactly.
> > Is it really necessary to do this every 5 seconds?
> > ---------
> >  echo "select agent_pid, session_id, display, server, status,\
> >   to_char(init_time,'DD.MM.YY*HH24:MI:SS'),cookie,client,gr_port,\
> >   sound_port,to_char(last_time,'DD.MM.YY*HH24:MI:SS'),uname,\
> >   to_char(now()-init_time,'SSSS'),fs_port  from  sessions  \
> >   where server='$2'  order by status desc;"|psql -t x2go_sessions
> >  ;;
> > -----------
> >
> > I saw you can change the sleep-time (5 seconds) in this script:
> > /usr/sbin/x2gocleansessions
> > but I am not sure this is a good idea...
I posted a description of what the various parts of X2Go do to the list
a while ago.  It included a discussion of the session cleanup process if
you would find that helpful.
> >
> > With regards.
> > Paul van der Vlis.
> 
> have you already found a solution to this??? I experience the same  
> issue tried to look for a sudo hack to silence log file output but was  
> not successful...
> 
> Any ideas on this?
> Greets,
> Mike
> 
> 
We did not find a way to silence the logs and, in our case, it was even
worse because we were doing LDAP lookups every five seconds for the
postgres user.  However, we did consolidate to a single, centralized
database for all X2Go Servers.  We also created a single cleanup daemon
to clean up all X2Go Servers so that we didn't have hundreds of daemons
all running every five seconds.  We had the advantage that our X2Go
Servers were built on VServers to the cleanup up script has direct
access to the file systems on all the X2Go Servers.  The routine could
probably be easily hacked to provide the same access via SSH and use a
single cleanup daemon.  I posted the patches and documentation a while
ago.

I have some more changes to post which refine it but have not had the
time to document and post them.  If someone does have the time, the
patches should really be rewritten to be configurable options.  As I
posted them, they are a rip and replace patch - almost more of a fork
which is the last thing on Earth I want to do  . . . well . . . almost
the last thing ;-)  - John