/var/adm/messages

[Angus John-Phillips]

Hi,

I have deleted my /var/adm/message file by mistake so copied back the prev with cp /var/adm/message.prev /var/adm/message but this is not being written to could you please advise.

Thanks,
Angus

[Robert-Jan Goossens · Accepted solution]

Hi Angus,

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

regards.
Robert-Jan

[Ron Irving]

Hi!!

Perhaps a permissions problem?

Hope this helps.

ron

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi angus!

if you have not already restarted the syslogd as mentioned by Robert-Jan, you can verify the file permissions by doing:

ll /var/adm/message*

the permissions for all similar files should be the same.

you should have done the following:
either
restart as mentioned by Robert-Jan
or
touch /var/adm/message
chown root:root /var/adm/message
chmod 600 /var/adm/message

(also normally, if you had to do a copy, you should have run "cp -p" instead or "cp")


hope this helps too!

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Angus John-Phillips]

Hi,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I have checked the permissions and stopped and restarted syslogd but there is still nothing writing to /var/adm/messages file any other ideas.

I have also touched the file as mentioned.

Thanks,
Angus

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi again,

could you post the /etc/syslog.conf file?

Are you sure you are using the /var/adm/messages file in the syslog.conf and not the default /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log file?

Robert-Jan

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Angus,

Someone "Linuxed" this system by modifying syslog.conf

This is a very bad idea, because anyone you bring in to look at a problem or cover for a vacation will not be able to quickly identify the syslog file.

I recommend you change syslog.conf to the default location /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

SEP

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi again angus,

Was this file being updated previously??

Unless you have a crontab entry that runs command:
/usr/sbin/dmesg - >> /var/adm/messages

every 10 minutes, nothing will be logged to this file. (see man dmesg)

As mentioned by Robert-Jan above, the default location of messages is /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log and this is defined in the /etc/syslog.conf

please check and revert back!

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Ian Box]

It's quite likely that /var/adm/messages isn't written by syslogd, but by a cron entry like: 0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/sbin/dmesg - >>/var/adm/messages

If it's not being written check the cron entry and the file /var/adm/msgbuf, which is a scratchpad used by dmesg -. I think the latter can just be replaced with an empty file if it has been deleted or corrupted.

Ian

[Angus John-Phillips]

Hi,

Thanks for getting back I have enclosed the syslog.conf file for you to look at.

root> /var/adm # ls -ltr /var/adm/messages
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 2 14:12 /var/adm/messages
root > /var/adm # ls -ltr /var/adm/messages
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 2 14:12 /var/adm/messages
root > /var/adm # cd /etc
root > /etc # ls -ltr syslog*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 1001 Jun 9 2004 syslog.conf.old
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 1038 Jun 9 2004 syslog.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 21 Apr 2 14:11 syslog.pid -> ../var/run/syslog.pid

Thanks,
Angus

[Tim Nelson]

typcially syslogd is configured to write log entries to /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log.

As mentioned please send your /etc/syslog.conf to determine where the syslogd is logging to

[Tim Nelson]

That is a crazy looking syslog.conf file. Looks like it is from Solaris system.

Typical looks like this:
# @(#)B.11.11_LR
#
# syslogd configuration file.
#
# See syslogd(1M) for information about the format of this file.
#
mail.debug /var/adm/syslog/mail.log
*.info;mail.none /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log
*.alert /dev/console
*.alert root
*.emerg *

[Torsten.]

Are you sure your server runs hp-ux???

[Patrick Wallek]

This is definitely from a Solaris system (/* SunOS 5.0 */). It would have been helpful if you had mentioned that in the initial post.

[Aashique]

Hi,
you can just make the message file using touch command.
Then restart the service:
/sbin/init.d/syslogd stop
/sbin/init.d/syslogd start

Thanks
Aashique