pmOpenLog reassigns the standard I/O stream oldstream (normally stderr) to be associated with the file
logname.
If logname is not "-" and the file already exists, it will be renamed to logname.prev else removed. Due
to permissions restrictions, the rename or removal may not succeed, but in the common use cases log‐name.prev remains with the contents of the previous version of logname. Then logname is recreated if
possible (to ensure correct ownership and permissions from the caller to pmOpenLog).
As a special case, if logname is "-" then no renaming, removal or reopening is performed and the function
simply sets status to 1 and returns oldstream. This is useful when the caller wants diagnostics on old‐stream stream (normally stderr) rather than a file, e.g. pmlogger-l- or pmcd-f-l-. Logging to stderr
is also useful for PMDAs in a containerized environment where it is beneficial for all PMDA logs to be
written to pmcd's stderr stream (and thus to a single destination), whether that is a file such as pm‐cd.log or the original stream inherited from the shell.
On return, the function value is the standard I/O stream, possibly replacing oldstream. In the event of
an error, the return value will be oldstream unchanged and status will be 0.
For success, status is 1, and a standard preamble is written to lognameLogforprognameonhostnamestarteddateandtime
and an atexit(3) handler is installed to write the postscript message to lognameLogfinisheddateandtime
when the processes exits.
progname is only used to annotate messages.