This is taken from the syslog.conf man page :
You may prefix each entry with the minus ``-'' sign to
omit syncing the file after every logging. Note that you
might lose information if the system crashes right behind
a write attempt. Nevertheless this might give you back
some performance, especially if you run programs that use
logging in a very verbose manner.
What I do is create a /var/log/everything file that is not synced,
and some files like emerg, crit etc, which are synced. They are
usually smaller, and if your machine crashes, you generally
don't bother about those non-critical logs...
alex
-- \\-----------------------------------------------------------\\ // Alexandre Maret -- Linux : The choice of a GNU generation // \\ amaret@infomaniak.ch -- http://www.infomaniak.ch/~amaret \\ //-----------------------------------------------------------//