topic Re: Log management in HP-UX in Operating System - HP-UX

Log management in HP-UX

senthil_kumar_1 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:03:20 GMT

Hi All,

I am new to HP-UX.

I would like to know the log management in HP-UX.

I know followings about log management.

1)About Syslog:

There is two log files are available for syslog.

i)OLDsyslog.log
ii)syslog.log

Syslog.log is current file and OLDsyslog.log is old file.

Now I have some questions on syslog:

1.1)When (how many days once) the log are being transfered from syslog.log to OLDsyslog?

1.2)On of my HP-UX server (HP-UX 11.11) has no data with in OLDsyslog.log, example:

# ll OLDsyslog.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 0 Mar 4 00:01 OLDsyslog.log

But it has six syslog files, I think log rotation has been done, but I dont know how they (pervious unix admin) done this.

Example:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 1119967 Mar 4 08:29 syslog.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 3222700 Mar 4 00:01 syslog.log.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 89506 Aug 7 2008 syslog.log.1.orig.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 4168313 Mar 3 00:01 syslog.log.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 105763 Nov 22 10:30 syslog.log.2.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 3989978 Mar 2 00:01 syslog.log.3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 238659 Nov 22 00:01 syslog.log.3.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 3092849 Mar 1 00:01 syslog.log.4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 247459 Nov 21 00:01 syslog.log.4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 2993922 Feb 28 00:01 syslog.log.5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 229038 Nov 20 00:01 syslog.log.5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 3373747 Feb 27 00:01 syslog.log.6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 251639 Nov 19 00:01 syslog.log.6.gz

How to find that why the OLDsyslog.log has no entries, and instead how the six syslog.log files are available?

So I have two questions:

1.1)When (how many days once) the log are being transfered from syslog.log to OLDsyslog?

1.2)How to find that why the OLDsyslog.log has no entries, and instead how the six syslog.log files are available?

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Torsten. — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:09:46 GMT

syslog will be moved to OLDsyslog after a reboot. Everything else is not standard, but customized by user scripts.

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Patrick Wallek — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:20:35 GMT

1.2) It appears that someone may have set up something like 'logrotate' to do a daily log rotation.

Check your root cron jobs for something like 'logrotate'. If it is there then you can look at the logrotate script and configuration files to determine what it is doing.

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Johnson Punniyalingam — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:25:00 GMT

>>1.1)When (how many days once) the log are being transfered from syslog.log to OLDsyslog?<<

As per normal behaviour it doesn't goes by days, when ever syslogd demons has been restarted either by reboot or syslod deamon restarted it will automatically rename or move existing syslog.log to OLDsyslog.log and new "syslog.log" has been created.

>>1.2)How to find that why the OLDsyslog.log has no entries, and instead how the six syslog.log files are available?<<<

This realy depends on scripts which in the server which is creating "Six....etc. syslog"

HTH,

Johnson

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Johnson Punniyalingam — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:30:42 GMT

Duplicate Thread, Please close it*& Continue with Original one.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1412369

Re: Log management in HP-UX

madhuchakkaravarthy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:58:22 GMT

Hi senthil

when ever the syslogd daemon are restarted ,, due to reboot or shutdown u will have oldsyslog.log...

if u have any test servers try to see the difference by rebooting or stopping syslogd daemon,,, but both entries will be in syslog.

regards

MC

Re: Log management in HP-UX

senthil_kumar_1 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:02:30 GMT

Hi All,

I have found following entries in /etc/syslog.conf file.

#############################################
mail.debug /var/adm/syslog/mail_log
*.info;mail.none /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log
*.alert /dev/console
*.alert root
*.emerg *
mail.alert /var/adm/syslog/mail_log
mark.debug /var/adm/syslog/mark_log
kern.info /var/adm/syslog/kern_log
user.info /var/adm/syslog/user_log
daemon.alert /var/adm/syslog/daemon_log
auth.info /var/adm/syslog/auth_log
lpr.info /var/adm/syslog/lpr_log
security.info /var/adm/syslog/security_log

#############################################

Could you please explain the purpose of each line in detail?

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Patrick Wallek — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:05:21 GMT

This has nothing to do with your original question.

However, 'man syslogd' should answer your questions.

Re: Log management in HP-UX

senthil_kumar_1 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:37:41 GMT

Hi All,

I have learned some information about syslog.

The syslogd command reads and logs messages into a set of files described by the configuration file /etc/syslog.conf.

Normally only the log files available in /var/adm/syslog directory are configure in /etc/syslog.conf.

So if we stop the syslog daemon the log files available in /var/adm/syslog will not get updated. But all other logs (cron , sulog, automount log) will get updated, am i correct?

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Johnson Punniyalingam — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:05:29 GMT

>>>So if we stop the syslog daemon the log files available in /var/adm/syslog will not get updated. But all other logs (cron , sulog, automount log) will get updated, am i correct?<<

NO

syslog.log -> (for system related logs,but some normal entry will added for daemons like,crond,inetd,ftpd,automout...etc) but in details logging are printed for cron,su,automount, see below locattions).

cron log -> ( /var/adm/cron/log -> crontab

su log -> switch user logs (/var/adm/sulog)

automount log -> /var/adm/automount.log

so in-short all (cron,su,automount) have there own logging file,

so if restart "syslogd" you can see OLDSyslog.log & syslog.log will only updated not others.

HTH,

Regards,
Johnson

Re: Log management in HP-UX

senthil_kumar_1 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:37:18 GMT

In man page I have found below mentioned.

# man syslogd

The syslogd command reads and logs messages into a set of files described by the configuration file /etc/syslog.conf.

Normally we have not configured any entries to log the activities of cron , sulog , wtmp and automount.log in /etc/syslog.conf.

1)so that, will it prevent from logging the activities of cron , sulog , wtmp and automount.log in to their respective log files?

2)If yes, why the files are not created like OLDcron.log, OLDautomout.log while restarting syslog?

3)If no, will no logs be created (syslog, cron , sulog, wtmp and etc.,) if we have stopped syslog?

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Johnson Punniyalingam — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:51:03 GMT

>>>2)If yes, why the files are not created like OLDcron.log, OLDautomout.log while restarting syslog? <<

becoz when you restart the "sylogd" as below, it will only created for OLDSyslog.log also syslogd -> dameons which writes its own information to "syslog.log" file, it should not write to OLDcron,OLDautomout.log

/sbin/init.d/syslogd stop
/sbin/init.d/syslogd start

Hope you can test above in any of your test servers. to clear doubts :)

Also you can refer to your posting

>>>I have found following entries in /etc/syslog.conf file.

#############################################
mail.debug /var/adm/syslog/mail_log
*.info;mail.none /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

look at the syslog.conf file -> pointing to /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

mail -> pointing to /var/adm/syslog/mail.log

Re: Log management in HP-UX

senthil_kumar_1 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:01:43 GMT

Hi All,

I have tested in my test server.

I would like to know whether the logs for cron , sulog, wtmp, automount.log will be created while syslogd is down.

So firs I have down the syslogd.

# /sbin/init.d/syslogd stop
syslogd stopped

After that no logs are created with in /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log but at the same time logs are being created in /var/adm/cron/log , /var/adm/sulog and /var/adm/wtmp.

So I come to conclusion that if we have stop the syslogd then it will not create any logs to the files available under /var/adm/syslog (all the files configured in /etc/syslog.conf) but at the same time other logs (cron, sulog, wtmp) will be created. am i correct because i want to double check with you?

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:28:57 GMT

Shalom,

No logs configured in syslog.conf will write when the syslogd daemon is down.

The data may be queued, you will have to test that.

But syslogd daemon is something you want up and running all the time.

SEP

Re: Log management in HP-UX

senthil_kumar_1 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:33:56 GMT

Hi

All the activities of starting and stopping the services (like nfs.server and nfs.client) will be in to which file because just for testing i have stopped and started again nfs.server and nfs.client but no logs are created for this activity in /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log?

Could you please clarify me about what are the service will be logged while start and stop and which file?

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:58:32 GMT

Shalom,

All the activities of starting and stopping the services (like nfs.server and nfs.client) will be in to which file because just for testing i have stopped and started again nfs.server and nfs.client but no logs are created for this activity in /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log?
>>>
All services configured to be logged in syslog will be logged with start and stop messages. But it depends how the service is configured where and how they log. apache is not going to log in syslog at all. It has its own log.

This varies application to application.
>>>>

Could you please clarify me about what are the service will be logged while start and stop and which file?

How the service will be logged depends on two factors:

1) syslog.conf configuration.
2) How the service is written. NFS does log to syslog.

SEP

Re: Log management in HP-UX

senthil_kumar_1 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:00:18 GMT

which one is correct?

1)wtmp or wtmps

2)btmp or btmps

Re: Log management in HP-UX

senthil_kumar_1 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:01:03 GMT

which one is correct?

1)wtmp or wtmps

2)btmp or btmps

Since my HP-UX server is having both wtmp & wtmps and btmp & btmps.

Re: Log management in HP-UX

James R. Ferguson — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:06:55 GMT

Hi:

> which one is correct? 1)wtmp or wtmps 2)btmp or btmps

If you have the "*s" named file on your server you're running 11.23 or later and that's the file that you want to analyze.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Log management in HP-UX

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:09:28 GMT

Shalom again,

Just checked an 11.31 system.

They have both files but one one is active.

root@mngp01:/var/adm # ll wtmp*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 adm adm 11400 Feb 3 16:23 wtmp
-rw-rw-r-- 1 adm adm 144744 Mar 11 13:06 wtmps
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 280 Jan 8 16:50 wtmpx
root@mngp01:/var/adm # ll btmp*
-rw------- 1 root other 0 Mar 8 2009 btmp
-rw------- 1 root other 11084 Feb 25 17:04 btmps

The btmp on this file is zero bytes because almost nobody logs into it.

See the dates for which file is active.

Your mileage may vary on earlier releases of HP-UX.

SEP