lfmt(1) lfmt(1)
NAME
lfmt - display error message in standard format and pass to logging and
monitoring services
SYNOPSIS
lfmt [-c] [-f flags] [-l label][-s severity][-G icon][-g catalog:msgid] format [args]
DESCRIPTION
lfmt uses format for printf style formatting of args. lfmt encapsulates
the output in the standard error message format and displays the output
on stderr. In addition, lfmt forwards its output to the logging and
monitoring facility.
The following options are available.
-c Also display the output on the console, with a date and time
stamp.
-f flags Specify logging information as a comma-separated list of
keywords from the following sets:
Major classification
Identifies the source of the condition.
Identifiers are: hard (hardware), soft
(software), and firm (firmware).
Message source subclassification
Identifies the type of software in which the
problem is spotted. Identifiers are: appl
(application), util (utility), and opsys
(operating system).
-G icon When the output device is the graphics console start up
screen (called the ``textport''), this option causes the
message to be drawn in a structured alert message box. The
icon argument specifies which icon to use and is either 0, 1,
2, 3, or 4, for Info, Progress, Question, Warning, or Action
icons. This option is intended to be used in start up and
shut down scripts.
-g catalog:msgid
Specify that a localized version of format should be
retrieved from a locale-specific message database. catalog
indicates the message database that contains the localized
version of the format string. catalog must be limited to 14
characters. These characters must be selected from a set of
all character values, excluding \0 (null) and the ASCII codes
for / (slash) and : (colon).
msgid is a positive number that indicates the index of the
string into the message database.
If catalog does not exist in the current locale (identified
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by the LC_MESSAGES or LANG environment variables), or if
msgid is out of bounds, lfmt will attempt to retrieve the
message from the C locale. If this second retrieval fails,
lfmt uses the format string as passed on the command line.
lfmt will output Message not found!!\n as the format string
if catalog is not a valid catalog name, or if msgid is not a
valid number as defined above.
-l label Specify the label string to be displayed with the message
(for example, "UX:cat"). label is a character string no more
than 25 characters in length; it will be automatically
suffixed with a colon (:). When unspecified, no label is
displayed as part of the message.
-s severity Specify the severity string to be displayed with the message.
Acceptable strings include the standard severities in either
their print string (that is, HALT, ERROR, INFO, WARNING, and
"TO FIX") or keyword (that is, halt, error, info, warn, and
action) forms, or any other user-defined string. A user-
defined string will be assigned the integer severity value of
5. The severity will be suffixed with a colon (:). The
ERROR severity will be used if no severity is specified.
Standard Error Message Format
lfmt displays error messages in the following format:
label: severity: text
If no label was defined using the -l label option, the message is
displayed in the format:
severity: text
If lfmt is called twice to display an error message and a helpful action
or recovery message, the output can look like the following:
label: severity: text
label: TO FIX: text
EXAMPLE
Example 1:
lfmt -f soft,util -l UX:test -s info "test facility enabled\n"
displays the message to stderr and makes it available for logging:
UX:test: INFO: test facility enabled
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SEE ALSO
gettxt(1), pfmt(1), printf(1), lfmt(3C), pfmt(3C), environ(5)
DIAGNOSTICS
Upon success, lfmt exits with code 0.
Upon failure, lfmt exits with the following codes:
1 write error.
2 cannot log or forward to console.
3 syntax error.
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