Logging with syslog

Log files related to daemons and system processes are located in the /var/log directory. These log files use a standard protocol called syslog, handled by the syslogd daemon. Every standard application makes use of syslogd to log information. This recipe describes how to use syslogd to log information from a shell script.

Getting ready

Log files help you deduce what is going wrong with a system. It is a good practice to log progress and actions with log file messages. The logger command will place data into log files with syslogd.

These are some of the standard Linux log files. Some distributions use different names for these files:

Log file	Description
/var/log/boot.log	Boot log information
/var/log/httpd	Apache web server log
/var/log/messages	Post boot kernel information
/var/log/auth.log /var/log/secure	User authentication log
/var/log/dmesg	System boot up messages
/var/log/mail.log /var/log/maillog	Mail server log
/var/log/Xorg.0.log	X server log

 

 

How to do it...

The logger command allows...