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Command ReferenceA-173
NAME
syslogd - log system messages
DESCRIPTION
The syslogd daemon logs system messages to the console, log files and other
remote systems as specified by its configuration file, /etc/syslog.conf. The sys-
logd daemon reads its configuration file when it starts up during the boot
procedure, or within 30 seconds after the /etc/syslog.conf file is modified. For
information on the format of the configuration file, see syslog.conf.
If /etc/syslog.conf does not exist the syslogd daemon will output all log mes-
sages of priority info or higher to the console and to the file /etc/messages. To
prevent /etc/messages from getting too large, the syslogd daemon will rotate
the contents of /etc/messages through the files /etc/messages.0 through
/etc/messages.5. This rotation is done once a week. So the log messages of the
current week will be saved in the file /etc/messages and the message logs of
the six weeks prior to that are saved in the files /etc/messages.0 through /etc/
messages.5.
To prevent large numbers of repeated messages being logged, the syslogd dae-
mon will follow the first instance of a repeated message with the number of
times the message was repeated. If a message is repeated over a long time
period, the syslogd daemon will wait for increasingly longer intervals before log-
ging the number of repeats. The repeat notification interval starts at 30 seconds
and moves quickly to 20 minutes.
FILES
/etc/syslog.conf The configuration file.
/etc/syslog.conf.sample A sample configuration file.
/etc/messages Message log file for current week.
/etc/messages.[0-5] Message log for prior weeks.
SEE ALSO
messages, syslog.conf
syslogd