WATCHCATD.CONF(5)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to WATCHCATD.CONF(5) — this is the manual for the config file of watchcatd(8). yeah. the whole file. it's a whole thing and we're gonna read it together 🫶

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

This file is where all the configuration info for the watchcat(8) daemon lives. That's it, that's the file.

Some ground rules, no cap:

• Every option goes on its own line. One option per line, do not group them, do not be cute about it.
• Comments start with a # and they run all the way to the end of the line.
• Blank spaces and empty lines? Ignored. Ghosted. They don't matter 💅

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

Here's everything you can put in there:

🌈 Global options

This bit affects watchcatd(8) as a whole, like the whole entire vibe.

• realtime = <true|false> — Turns real-time mode on or off. When real-time mode is on, watchcatd(8) locks itself into memory so it is never swapped out. It's giving main character energy, it refuses to be paged out 😤
• priority = <schedule priority> — Sets the schedule priority for realtime mode. Lowkey important: this option has no effect if realtime is set to false. Like, none. Zero. It's just sitting there.
• user = <username> — Defines the name of the unprivileged user that watchcatd(8) will run as. This user's home directory gets used for chroot, and all of their groups get applied. slay 🎀

👑 Master section

This section defines options that affect the master process of watchcatd(8). The boss. The parent. The one in charge.

• master_debug_level = <debug level> — Sets the debug level for the master process. It can be the sum of zero or more of the values below, which lands you on a number between 0 and 63.
  • 1 — Security logs (low volume)
  • 2 — Sent signal logs (moderate to high volume)
  • 4 — Failure to send signal logs (low volume)
  • 8 — Failure on socket read logs (low volume)
  • 16 — Child death logs (low volume)
  • 32 — Child finishing logs (low volume)
• master_pid_file = <file name> — The file where the server writes its process ID into, or the directory where it will be created. Yes bestie, file or directory, it handles both 🦋

🧚 Slave section

This section defines options that affect the slave process of watchcatd(8). The worker bee. The one doing the actual labor.

• slave_debug_level = <debug level> — Sets the debug level for the slave process. Again, it can be the sum of zero or more of the values below, giving you a number between 0 and 2015.
  • 1 — Creation/termination of a cat process logs (high volume)
  • 2 — Header parsing error logs (high volume)
  • 4 — Communication failure with an existing cat. Basically this means socket errors (high volume)
  • 8 — Communication timeout logs (low volume)
  • 16 — Security logs (low volume)
  • 64 — Critical failure logs (low volume)
  • 128 — Warning logs (low to moderate volume)
  • 256 — Connection attempt logs (low to moderate volume)
  • 512 — Successful connection logs (high volume)
  • 1024 — Successful fetching of Process ID logs (high volume)

Not me having to tell you this: the value 32 currently has no use. It's just vibing there. Don't count on it 💀

• slave_device = <device> — Defines the absolute path for the watchcat device.
• slave_max_connections = <max. connections> — Defines the maximum number of client connections that the slave will handle.
• slave_max_connections_per_pid = <max. per pid> — Defines the maximum number of connections per client that the slave will handle. Use zero for unlimited. no cap, go wild 🍓

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🌟 EXAMPLE 🌟

There's a complete example configuration file in /etc/watchcatd.conf. It is included with this package. Free real estate, bestie, go read it 🎀

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📁 FILES 📁

• /etc/watchcatd.conf — The watchcatd(8) configuration file. the one. the only. the icon 💅

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🔍 SEE ALSO 🔍

• watchcatd(8)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this was WATCHCATD.CONF from January 2004, section 5 of the manual. go forth and configure responsibly, ily 🫶✨