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The file /etc/syslog.conf contains information used by the system log daemon, syslogd(1M) , to forward a system message to appropriate log files and/or users. syslogd preprocesses this file through m4(1) to obtain the correct information for certain log files, defining LOGHOST if the address of "loghost" is the same as one of the addresses of the host that is running syslogd.
A configuration entry is composed of two TAB -separated fields:
The selector field contains a semicolon-separated list of priority specifications of the form:
where facility is a system facility, or comma-separated list of facilities, and level is an indication of the severity of the condition being logged. Recognized values for facility include:
- user
- Messages generated by user processes. This is the default priority for messages from programs or facilities not listed in this file.
- kern
- Messages generated by the kernel.
- The mail system.
- daemon
- System daemons, such as in.ftpd(1M)
- auth
- The authorization system: login(1) , su(1M) , getty(1M) , among others.
- lpr
- The line printer spooling system: lpr(1B) , lpc(1B) , among others.
- news
- Reserved for the USENET network news system.
- uucp
- Reserved for the UUCP system; it does not currently use the syslog mechanism.
- cron
- The cron/at facility; crontab(1) , at(1) , cron(1M) , among others.
- local0-7
- Reserved for local use.
- mark
- For timestamp messages produced internally by syslogd.
- *
- An asterisk indicates all facilities except for the mark facility.
Recognized values for level are (in descending order of severity):
*.debug;mail.none
- emerg
- For panic conditions that would normally be broadcast to all users.
- alert
- For conditions that should be corrected immediately, such as a corrupted system database.
- crit
- For warnings about critical conditions, such as hard device errors.
- err
- For other errors.
- warning
- For warning messages.
- notice
- For conditions that are not error conditions, but may require special handling.
- info
- Informational messages.
- debug
- For messages that are normally used only when debugging a program.
- none
- Do not send messages from the indicated facility to the selected file. For example, a selector of
The action field indicates where to forward the message. Values for this field can have one of four forms:
Blank lines are ignored. Lines for which the first nonwhite character is a ‘#’ are treated as comments.
With the following configuration file:
*.notice;mail.info /var/log/notice *.crit /var/log/critical kern,mark.debug /dev/console kern.err @server *.emerg * *.alert root,operator *.alert;auth.warning /var/log/auth
syslogd will log all mail system messages except debug messages and all
notice (or higher) messages into a file named /var/log/notice. It logs all
critical messages into /var/log/critical, and all kernel messages and 20-minute
marks onto the system console.
Kernel messages of err (error) severity or higher are forwarded to the
machine named server. Emergency messages are forwarded to all users. The
users root and operator are informed of any alert messages. All messages
from the authorization system of warning level or higher are logged in
the file /var/log/auth.