allowing symlinks in /var/log is allowing people to abuse and exploit the system (see issue 916152).  we're not going to allow any program have an exception to symlinks under /var.

vmlog still uses symlinks here:
# ls -l /var/log/vmlog/
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 262139 Dec 17 11:37 vmlog.1.20181210-154632
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 262139 Dec 19 08:36 vmlog.1.20181217-162332
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root     38 Dec 17 21:25 vmlog.1.LATEST -> /var/log/vmlog/vmlog.1.20181217-162332
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root     38 Dec 10 23:48 vmlog.1.PREVIOUS -> /var/log/vmlog/vmlog.1.20181210-154632
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 234330 Dec 17 16:06 vmlog.20181210-154632
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 261298 Dec 19 13:36 vmlog.20181217-162332
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root     21 Dec 17 16:23 vmlog.LATEST -> vmlog.20181217-162332
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root     21 Dec 10 18:46 vmlog.PREVIOUS -> vmlog.20181210-154632

do we need these LATEST/PREVIOUS symlinks ?

what actually consumes these logs ?  it's strongly preferred we stop managing log files by hand and switch to using syslog (which is what everything else in the system is using).  can we switch vmlog to syslog instead ?