Main log files for linux & Mac OSX
July 18, 2009 2:04 PM Subscribe
What are the main logs for understanding what the Unix (Linux and Mac OS X) systems are doing? Which log files are important for system administration?
For Mac OS X, the application Console is useful, it's in the Utilities folder.
Most of your logs will be in /var/log. Each distribution will be slightly different, and it depends on what you're doing. Are you looking at Apache logs? Mail logs? Etc. You will generally find them all in /var/log though. messages or syslog is pretty common, but I only find them marginally useful compared to the application logs.
posted by icebourg at 2:14 PM on July 18, 2009
Most of your logs will be in /var/log. Each distribution will be slightly different, and it depends on what you're doing. Are you looking at Apache logs? Mail logs? Etc. You will generally find them all in /var/log though. messages or syslog is pretty common, but I only find them marginally useful compared to the application logs.
posted by icebourg at 2:14 PM on July 18, 2009
Seconding messages/everything. I mostly find them useful for occasional hardware issues (laptop user here).
posted by benign at 3:04 PM on July 18, 2009
posted by benign at 3:04 PM on July 18, 2009
I can't speak to MacOS X specifically (don't have any machines running it), but as far as Linux: Definitely /var/log/messages. maillog too if you are running sendmail. Service-specific logs (Apache comes to mind) of course are great sources of additional information. Not all services necessarily log somewhere under /var/log, though many do... check the documentation for the service in question.
posted by axiom at 4:54 PM on July 18, 2009
posted by axiom at 4:54 PM on July 18, 2009
in an alien system, ls -l is your friend
ls -lt /var/log will show the recent logs and their sizes--you should be able to guess from that which ones have the useful info.
posted by hexatron at 8:29 PM on July 18, 2009
ls -lt /var/log will show the recent logs and their sizes--you should be able to guess from that which ones have the useful info.
posted by hexatron at 8:29 PM on July 18, 2009
ls -lart is of more use usually, it will show all logs (including those hidden by having a name starting with '.') in reverse time order, so newest at the bottom.
posted by hardcode at 4:35 AM on July 19, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by hardcode at 4:35 AM on July 19, 2009 [1 favorite]
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posted by aheckler at 2:13 PM on July 18, 2009