topic Re: Mail history in Operating System - Linux

Mail history

peterchu — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 05:36:17 GMT

We use the RH and send the mail through the sendmail service , I want to check the mail log , where can I find the send mail log to check the mail history ? thx.

Re: Mail history

Alexander Chuzhoy — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 06:06:30 GMT

it's /var/log/maillog

while by default each user gets mail
to /var/mail/username

Re: Mail history

peterchu — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 06:45:01 GMT

thx alex , is there other files because I check it already ? thx.

Re: Mail history

Alexander Chuzhoy — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 07:22:29 GMT

What exactly do you want to check/audit ?

Re: Mail history

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 07:59:20 GMT

Unless you've changed logging all mail activity should go through /var/log/maillog

service sendmail status

Is it running?

When I monitor mail traffic I use this command.

tail -f /var/log/maillog , gives you the real time look.

SEP

Re: Mail history

peterchu — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 08:49:21 GMT

yes , it /var/log/maillog is ok , i found my mail , but the history i want to check is long time ago so I didn't find it at this log , so I ask whether any other log in the system ? thx.

Re: Mail history

Mark Grant — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 09:47:52 GMT

This will depend on the distribution. For example, On re-boot my mail log is moved to "maillog.X" with X being a number. A new maillog starts being written to.

If you don't have any other maillog type files in /var/log then I'm afraid you're going to have to restore them from backup. You DO have a backup don't you?

Re: Mail history

Paul Cross_1 — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:08:32 GMT

look at your /etc/syslog.conf file. Redhat defaults to /var/log/maillog, but of course you can change it and put it anywhere you like.

from the /etc/syslog.conf file on redhat 7.3:

# Log all the mail messages in one place.
mail.* /var/log/maillog

Re: Mail history

Vernon Brown_4 — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:09:28 GMT

The default log-rotate saves about 4 weeks of maillog files. They will be maillog.1, maillog.2 maillog.3, and maillog.4.

All in /var/log/

Vern

Re: Mail history

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:16:02 GMT

well, with RHL out-of-the-box you will see logs for the last month.

you can save logs for months/years if you have enough disk space, just edit

/etc/logrotate.conf

and/or

/etc/logrotate.d/service_name