syslogd behavior appears to have changed (broken?) in 1.37.0

[thom-nic]

Syslogd no longer outputs anything after upgrading from 1.36.1 to 1.37.0.

I have FEATURE_SYSLOGD_CFG=y and my /etc/syslog.conf looks like this:

kern,user.*                                 /var/log/messages

syslogd is invoked simply as syslogd -S

After upgrading to v1.37.0 I cannot get any output in /var/log/messages. Example:

root@cs-0595 ~ $ ps|grep [s]yslogd
  243 root      0:00 syslogd -S
root@cs-0595 ~ $ logger -p user.warn "this is a test"
root@cs-0595 ~ $ cat /var/log/messages 
Jan 19 19:24:20 syslogd started: BusyBox v1.37.0
root@cs-0595 ~ $ 

It is not a readonly filesystem or file permission issue, as I can manually write to /var/log/messages.

I have tried other options like -n -l 8 -O - but I still do not see log output from logger or any other services, only the single line when syslogd starts and stops.

I have tried syslogd -n -C then logging some messages. logread similarly only shows the syslogd startup message and nothing else.

Everything works as expected under v1.36.1. Example:

root@cs-0595 ~ $ cat /var/log/messages 
Jan 19 19:04:11 syslogd started: BusyBox v1.36.1
Jan 19 19:04:11 ifplugd(eth0): started: BusyBox v1.36.1 (2026-01-19 18:58:30 UTC)
Jan 19 19:04:11 ifplugd(eth0): upping interface
Jan 19 19:04:12 ifplugd(eth0): using SIOCETHTOOL detection mode
Jan 19 19:04:12 ifplugd(eth0): interface exists
Jan 19 19:04:12 ifplugd(eth0): link is down
Jan 19 19:04:12 dropbear[249]: Running in background
Jan 19 19:04:13 ifplugd(eth0): link is up
Jan 19 19:04:13 ifplugd(eth0): executing '/etc/ifplugd/ifplugd.action eth0 up'
Jan 19 19:04:13 zcip: init eth0
Jan 19 19:04:13 zcip: start, interface eth0
Jan 19 19:04:13 udhcpc[318]: started, v1.36.1
Jan 19 19:04:13 udhcpc[318]: broadcasting discover
Jan 19 19:04:16 udhcpc[318]: broadcasting discover
Jan 19 19:04:19 udhcpc[318]: broadcasting discover
Jan 19 19:04:19 udhcpc[318]: broadcasting select for...
Jan 19 19:04:19 udhcpc[318]: lease of ..., lease time 86400
Jan 19 19:04:19 ifplugd(eth0): exit code: 0
Jan 19 19:04:23 zcip: config eth0 169.254.12.34
Jan 19 19:04:30 : starting pid 326, tty '': '-/bin/login -f root'
Jan 19 19:04:30 login[326]: root login on 'UNKNOWN'