Information abound about syslog, but I can’t find anything very concise for my interest.
I have a user-created bash script that should log various debug, info, and error messages. I’d like to use syslog. This in Ubuntu Server distribution.
I’m looking for a quick overview only.
- I see many files in
/etc/logrotate.dthat don’t get discussed in any man pages that confuse me. - Should I be logging as user? local0-7?
- Do I need to do something to configure this before I use these in a logger command?
- How should I define what logs get created? Or is this already done?
With those questions answered I should be able to glean the details from the man pages.
You want the logger(1) utility, available in the bsdutils package.
From the man page:
There’s nothing that’s essential to configure, just pass the switches you want. E.g.
You can now inspect wherever local3.info messages go and you will see something like this:
You only need to worry about logrotate if you need something fancier than this.
As for what log facility to use, I would use daemon for daemon messages and local for most other things. You should consult syslog(3) for the purposes of the different facilities.