Tie::Syslog
===========

Copyright (c) 2000 Broc Seib. All rights reserved. This program
is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.

Broc Seib, bseib@vyking.com


SYNOPSIS
========

  use Tie::Syslog;

  tie *MYLOG, 'Tie::Syslog', 'local0.error', 'my_program', 'pid';

  print MYLOG "I made an error."; ## this will be syslogged
  printf MYLOG "Error %d", 42;    ## syslog as "Error 42"

  untie *MYLOG;


DESCRIPTION
===========
This module allows you to tie a filehandle (output only) to
syslog. This becomes useful in general when you want to
capture any activity that happens on STDERR and see that it
is syslogged for later perusal. You can also create an arbitrary
filehandle, say LOG, and send stuff to syslog by printing to
this filehandle. This module depends on the Sys::Syslog module
to actually get info to syslog.

When used with STDERR, combined with the good habit of using
the perl -w switch, this module happens to be useful in
catching unexpected errors in any of your code, or team's
code. Tie::Syslog is pretty brain-dead. However, it can
become quite flexible if you investigate your options with
the actual syslog daemon. Syslog has a variety of options
available, including notifying console, logging to other
machines running syslog, or email support in the event of
Bad Things. Consult your syslog documentation to get
/etc/syslog.conf setup by your sysadmin and use Tie::Syslog
to get information into those channels.


INSTALLATION
============

To install this package, change to the directory where you
unarchived this distribution and type the following:

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make test
	make install

Note that the 'make test' cannot really verify that anything is
going to syslog, because this depends on your local syslog setup.
Please refer to your syslog documentation.

If you do not have root access on your machine, then you may
not have the ability to install this module in the standard
perl library path. You may direct the installation into your
own space, e.g.,

	perl Makefile.PL LIB='/home/your_login/lib'

or perhaps the entire installation, e.g.,

	perl Makefile.PL PREFIX='/home/your_login'

If you make the installation into your own directory, then
remember that you must tell perl where to search for modules
before trying to 'use' them. For example:

	use lib '/home/your_login/lib';
	use Tie::Syslog;


The most current version of this module should be available
at your favorite CPAN site, or may be retrieved from
  http://vyking.com/CPAN/

Please let me know if you are using this module. Tell me what
bugs you find or what can be done to improve it.