Table of Contents

Logging

What is logged, to where, reports, and to whom.

Access

Installation

Installed as the default Debian logging setup.

/etc/klogd/default

Change KLOGD line to read:

KLOGD="-c 5"

to turn off console messages for lower priority messages.

Technically, we should be changing the kernel.printk line in /etc/sysctl.conf instead, but that has not yet been tested.

logrotate.conf

Edit /etc/logrotate.conf to change the rotate option for /var/log/wtmp from 1 to 25, and /var/log/btmp from 1 to 13.

Later changes and corrections

Add option dateext to change the naming convention of adding generation numbers ".1", ".2", etc. to the "-yyyymmdd" format. Also manually rename all existing log files to the new format. Note this is the default in later releases.

Fix incorrect permissions for the /var/log/btmp entry from 0660 to 0600. Also chmod existing files to make the same change. This is a well known bug fixed in later releases, but should be verified.

syslog.conf

Everything at level of info other than kern.info and mail.info goes to /var/log/messages. That was accomplished with:

news.info;daemon.info;\
      auth.info;authpriv.info;\
      cron.info;syslog.info;\
      user.info               -/var/log/messages

OLD:

#  /etc/syslog.conf	Configuration file for syslogd.
#
#			For more information see syslog.conf(5)
#			manpage.

#
# First some standard logfiles.  Log by facility.
#

auth,authpriv.*			/var/log/auth.log
*.*;auth,authpriv.none		-/var/log/syslog
#cron.*				/var/log/cron.log
daemon.*			-/var/log/daemon.log
kern.*				-/var/log/kern.log
lpr.*				-/var/log/lpr.log
mail.*				-/var/log/mail.log
user.*				-/var/log/user.log
uucp.*				/var/log/uucp.log

#
# Logging for the mail system.  Split it up so that
# it is easy to write scripts to parse these files.
#
mail.info			-/var/log/mail.info
mail.warn			-/var/log/mail.warn
mail.err			/var/log/mail.err

# Logging for INN news system
#
news.crit			/var/log/news/news.crit
news.err			/var/log/news/news.err
news.notice			-/var/log/news/news.notice

#
# Some `catch-all' logfiles.
#
*.=debug;\
	auth,authpriv.none;\
	news.none;mail.none	-/var/log/debug
*.=info;*.=notice;*.=warn;\
	auth,authpriv.none;\
	cron,daemon.none;\
	mail,news.none		-/var/log/messages

#
# Emergencies are sent to everybody logged in.
#
*.emerg				*

#
# I like to have messages displayed on the console, but only on a virtual
# console I usually leave idle.
#
#daemon,mail.*;\
#	news.=crit;news.=err;news.=notice;\
#	*.=debug;*.=info;\
#	*.=notice;*.=warn	/dev/tty8

# The named pipe /dev/xconsole is for the `xconsole' utility.  To use it,
# you must invoke `xconsole' with the `-file' option:
# 
#    $ xconsole -file /dev/xconsole [...]
#
# NOTE: adjust the list below, or you'll go crazy if you have a reasonably
#      busy site..
#
daemon.*;mail.*;\
	news.crit;news.err;news.notice;\
	*.=debug;*.=info;\
	*.=notice;*.=warn	|/dev/xconsole

Reporting

TODO

Credits