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some logs empty in /var/log

Offline purvis

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some logs empty in /var/log
« on: October 13, 2013, 09:33:22 AM »
I am seeing empty log files in /var/log directory.
Boot.log, Spooler and Maillog
Not sure what to make of it.
Logs are empty even on test machines with newly installed SME 8.0 even before the beta 1 issue.
I have used the "signal-event pre-restore" method with smeserver.tgz to migrate to new servers before.
But I see this problem in newly test servers too.

I am wondering what others are seeing in their /var/log directory?

Offline stephdl

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Re: some logs empty in /var/log
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2013, 12:10:55 PM »
same behaviour for me

spooler,maillog,bootlog are empty log, even if i can see rotation of log for all of these

Idon't upgrade my server to sme8beta1 even if it  the package smeserver-release has a cosmetic goal....display the smeserver version.
See http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation
irc : Freenode #sme_server #sme-fr

!!! Please write your knowledge to the Wiki !!!

Offline mmccarn

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Re: some logs empty in /var/log
« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2013, 04:02:25 PM »
These files are all defined in /etc/syslog.conf:
Code: [Select]
# egrep "spooler|boot|mail" /etc/syslog.conf
local7.* /var/log/boot.log
mail.* -/var/log/maillog
news.* -/var/log/spooler
uucp.* -/var/log/spooler

I think qmail and qpsmtpd were configured to log to multilog instead of syslog sometime around the introduction of SME 7.  Multidrop/Fetchmail still logs to syslog, but if you aren't using fetchmail, /var/log/maillog would remain empty.

I don't use a shared printer through my SME server, so I expect /var/log/spooler to remain empty.

Empty /var/log/boot.log seems to be a known bug in Centos 5 and the underlying RedHat version.

Offline purvis

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Re: some logs empty in /var/log
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2013, 08:04:32 AM »
I am not using fetchmail and also not using the server for printing.
So i did not expect the Spooler file for me to have any if little messages in the log file.

But i figured a boot log file would exist and have information in it.
The three log files do exist and do rotate, they just empty.
I rarely look at these kind of files.

I did screw up one production server trying to reset permissions to these files from a previous post.
Luckily the server was not the most important of servers. But i will have to do a fresh install. Guess i will learn some new skills out of stress.

Offline CharlieBrady

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Re: some logs empty in /var/log
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2013, 05:14:19 PM »
I think qmail and qpsmtpd were configured to log to multilog instead of syslog sometime around the introduction of SME 7.

No, much earlier in the case of qmail. qmail has used multilog since a very early e-smith. qpsmtpd has also used multilog since it was introduced, which I believe was SME7, as you suggest.

The rest of your analysis looks good - the empty log files should be expected, and aren't a problem.