87 comment

  1. dear talent,

    Can u help me how to redirect the /var/log/messages to email.
    DNS server if any clients query log will stores /var/log/messages files i need to send those lof files in ip wise daily or weekly.
    how shell i do it.

    1. chandra

      it is possible using mutt coomand and mail -s command just write a script and put in crontab it is working

  2. Dear Vivek,

    I had an automatic reboot system in my server linux and I donÂ´t find any evidence about the cause that could produce that.

    Can you explain me where I have to looking for logs of error that guide me to find automatic reboot cause?.

    Gonzalo R.

    1. your permissions. you can set it so a remote user can shut down the server. change permissions on shutdown or search your distributions forum and post if you do not find an answer in there or in google.

      1. some distributions are setup that way by default, which is kind of annoying. Means if anyone logs in remotely in any way, they can turn you off or reboot you. NOT FUNNY. I hope you have a firewall and have it enabled.

    1. Hi,

      Use atq for last time at commands run

      and check the logs

      by using grep error /var/log/messages

      and also check the by using atd

  3. Chandra You can do this by opening a terminal and typing #cd /var/log/ and may view the files in the directory by typing #ls . You may view the log by typing #vi /var/log/messages .

  4. I can see a lot of the following error in my system and I cannot understand what it means, can yu shed somelight on it

    Feb 22 04:40:00 msuic3 msu6_6: ciMonitor 3 of 131 registered tasks Failed!

  5. Hi,

    I want classify logs and store it in a database. Into what categories can/should I classify them.
    Thank you,

  6. Hi there Linux users, I have bean trying to in stall Debian Lenny beta 2-i386 in a raid 0 con fig, on my p/c
    the hard ware is all set up for raid 0, I am having difficulty with the configuration of the partitons, boot sector, file type, the “type of file allocation table” to install. I have bean trying to track down the
    var/log, but I cant find that, the location was “http://192.2.2/var/log/partman_choose_partitiion_o.png
    I have bean using pure dyne live CD to help me ,but I still was not able to look at the “/var/logs,
    invariable I think I need expert help. thank you in advance

    1. this is a reply to my last message , I have given up on trying to install Linux on a virtual raid 0 system, so I ended up installing win 98 se with a new web browser OPERA and it runs like a hot dam, by far this is my most complex P/C to date, in one respect by the things it can do, the open source community has truly bean a liberator for me , not to mention Debian lenny -57-i386 1.iso I know this is old hat by computer standards , I was having problems trying to install NDISWRAPPER on an i386 architecture , and it did not help when my PC was hacked and I was effectively locked out of my p/c, no thanks to VLUG in Victoria but thats a “Hole” different story, I ended up installing ndiswrapper with a new O/S on a network complete with a bunch of other computers , I am currently working on a new black project , but that is top secret .

  7. I have a basic account in linux of my intitue. How can i know all the login sessions done in my account ,their timing etc… an i also know any ftp or ssh done in my account?????

  8. Thanks. I have a question: does Linux record the software installation process? For example I use apt to install some software in Debian but I would like to know where it puts the files. Can it be found in log file?

  9. hi friends,

    i have smb server and i want to know the logs of each and every folder those who access please help its very urgent…..

  10. Someone desintalled an application on my Linux server ( Control_M) – What log file should I search for that – and find out who is doing it?

  11. Hi,
    I am new to Linux, Can u pls any one of u tell me how to copy files using “rcp” from the remote location and what r da min requirements to my system.

  12. Hi,


    [2] System reports “Disk-Controller Failure” then which log files in /var/logs should we check?



    or some other log files?

  13. hi, i am having webserver in linux and mail server in windows.

    in our websites we have contuct us page from that we are not able to get any email.
    Can anyone help me in this reg

  14. Dear naresh,
    there is coomand –

    #rsync -r Ipaddress :location of data

    example :
    #rsync -r192.168.0.18 :/root/slides


  15. Trace of runtime activities in UNIX

    I’ve taken a project to work upon tracing of runtime activities on unix system
    into a log file. Like, to implement a program which will show the log of everything
    kind of files/directories i opened, closed, created, deleted(with the time), etc.

    Please suggest me something to do it in a better way.

  16. How can i archive all the log files in redhat enterprise linux5?
    Your help would be really appreciated.

  17. I’m confused what does the following command do :
    sudo cat /var/log/messages | grep err | -d” -f5

  18. Is anyone able to tell me why I can no longer get Outlook to recognize email address spammaster@domain.com after deleting maillog files to make more room on our email server. This was set up as a forward of all spam so it could be reviewed.

    We are running spammaster with sendmail on a FreeBSD server.

  19. Thanks for this command, I was able to view my server log when the server stopped responding to requests.

    Nice work :)

  20. Iam using Linux operating System’s Mint flavour on a Virtual Machine…can anyone tell me the exact process of scheduling linux jobs using the at command….and a question:There is a scenario where in i have given all kinds of permissions to a file and it’s directory using the command(read,write & execute) and i want to assign this file’s ownership to a “other” user…so how would i do that…Help me out Guyzz.

  21. The command which i forgot to mention in my previous post was chmod 777 and file ownership change command is chown newowner filename

  22. my linux server was turned off due to some power outages, kindly tell me which logs to access and how, so I can find out the duration and the time of the outages, I am a lower than a novice on linux

  23. If i try check the status of service , does linux log it to any file or is there any optioin to allow logging such.
    eg: service smbd status
    If I execute it shows the status of the samba. would like to know that such query is logged or not or is there any possible to enable and log it.

    Thanks in advance.

  24. I am a fresh graduate engineer working in a networking company. i am on a study project on servers and a total fresher to linux. i just went for a 4days training on the basics. i have been asked to learn how to generate a cronjob to delete logs older than 24hours. after googling i tried with deleting the contents in /var/log/messages that are older than a day using the command find /var/log/messages -mtime +1 -exec rm {} \;
    when i did this nothing happened. i tried the same with -1 to try deleteing present day’s logs. the whole file messages got deleted. please help me.

    1. Hello Nida,

      mtime -1 means modification time less than 1 day and -mtime +1 means modification time greater than 1 day.

      Therefore mtime -1 will delete all your files. It worked as designed.
      Best Regards

      1. Hello Nida

        Do same thing wat charles said and +1 means not modified on one day , -exec argument represents which file you found to apply the another command.

        exe; find / -mtime +1 var/log/* -type f -exec rm {}\;

  25. Hi, I have an important enquiry, In the centos server that i administer , there are var/log/secure var/log/secure.1 and so on, but there are empty, other log files like messages audit and … are not empty, they show plenty of useful info, Yesterday I discovered a bruteforce attack on my server by checking messages LOG, but when i checked secure log it was EMPTY , so my question is HOW CAN I configure my centos to store secure log as well ??? !!!

  26. Can someone kindly assist me with scp or ftp or anything applicable between my laptop running win7 and my server running fedora-16. I can send email. i can telnet to my server but i have been unable to ftp to or from the server. Please help me.

  27. Iâ€™m definitely becoming your biggest fun! ;)))
    Awesome information!!!Helped me a lot!!!

    Greatest 2013 to you all!!

  28. thanks. i forgot the prefixes in the terminal. mostly i just use win scp to check the logs through an explorer… nice post! :)

  29. HI

    I want to know how to get May 2012 logs from general messages and secure messages?
    system aromatically archive old logs?

  30. Dear Experts,

    Can any one tel me how to configure Ram utilization in nagios for AIX SERVERS

    Pls help me on high pirotiy.

    Raghu S

  31. I would like to know we had mail server (linux-redhat) and proxy server with same ip,
    our mailserver is working but our proxy server it is pinging but we dont get internet connection.
    this happened twice, one our engineer came he saw service status squid,
    then he deleted some file temp or log file i didnt saw properly,
    and he reboot the linux system it started again both everything was working properly.
    Again after some day same problem occur, no one is there to help to resolve the problem ???? is anyone can help me asap

  32. how to enable following logs in a Redhat/Centos


  33. hi thanks for the tips.

    i have used your site for heaps of references over the past 12 months or so and am always appreciative of you sharing your knowedge.

    your tips are always relevant, accurate and useful



  34. hi

    Please some1 help to know that Linux RHEL 6 workstation can store the logs of usage of cd rom? Is it possible to that linux save cdrom usage logs..??

    Kindly help,,

  35. Hi,

    I need to find the history of particular id in aix server someone pls help me in this….

  36. Hi,

    Mysql log is located two different path location and which one is correct location.


  37. hi…. i installed mysql by
    “yum install mysql mysql-server” over
    then i want start mysql-server but getting
    “[root@localhost ~]# service mysqld start
    Redirecting to /bin/systemctl start mysqld.service
    Job failed. See system journal and ‘systemctl status’ for details.”
    then i checked this one
    [root@localhost ~]# cat /var/log/messages|mysqld.log
    bash: mysqld.log: command not found.
    i got this error….. plz tell the solution …. (urgent)

  38. Hi,

    When i’m using these (/var/log/messages) commands getting permission denied error. How to overcome this?


  39. Does anyone knows why my rsyslog.conf has a line like this:

    mail.* -/var/log/maillog

    To be exact, what means the hyphen “-” before the path “/var/log/maillog”


  40. I am stuck. I have the following response from my server:

    Running in FIPS 140-2 Mode
    Validating FIPS certified DLL…Passed

    Connecting to
    attempting… Success!
    Username: neilsftp
    Authentication SUCCESS
    Remote Server Disconnected Unexpectedly

    No matter how I try to get in it authorizes me and dumps me.

  41. Hi,

    i want to filter 40x,50x error and send to another file. please give the required command.

  42. I have added my regular user ID to group root but I am still unable to read the file /var/log/secure. If a user is part of the group that can read this file, if I add a user to that group that ID should be able to read the file?

  43. For example, if task 3 was to provide command configuring network interface eth0 so that the IP address was, network mask was and the broadcast address was, you would enter the line as:

    3. ifconfig eth0 netmask broadcast

    And if task 6 required you to show how a line defining alias called ‘cp’ for command ‘cp -i’ you would enter into .bashrc file the following:

    6. alias cp=’cp -i’

    1. Which file you would use to redefine existing system variable PATH (provide full path)?

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