Re: Solaris log files

[David Wolfskill <david@dhw.vip.best.com>]

>From: Steve DeBord <debord@liebhardt.com>
>Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 13:02:19 -0500

>Being the newly appointed Sysadmin for our Sun Ultra Enterprise system, I
>was wondering if anyone has any suggestions regarding the logs that need
>checked on a daily/weekly basis.  Our server is running Solaris 2.5.1.

>Suggestions?

Well....

As has been suggested, /var/adm/messages.  Actually, look in both
/var/adm and /var/log for any file that changes fairly often.  :-)  You
might check /etc/syslog.conf to see if perhaps a predecessor arranged
for anything to be logged in an unexpected place (such as on a different
machine).

But I don't know what else to suggest, without a slightly better clue
as to what "services" that system (yes, I noted the singular) is
intended to provide.  I would not be at all surprised if there were some
things that might benefit from a change in the logging.

There also exist packages that can both aid in reducing that amount of
irrelevant stuff to wade through and (by examining the docs & examples,
if nothing else) can also provide clues as to what other folks seemed to
think might be important.  From memory, I believe that one of them is
called "swatch".

Of course, it would be Very Nice if your predecessor(s) had left some
sort of documentation about what they were trying to accomplish when
changes were made to the system.  This is one of the respects in which
religious use of a change control mechanism (such as RCS or SCCS) can
prove useful.

And please bear in mind that it's not only other folks who might benefit
if you keep records & logs:  I've often found it helpful to glance
through the change logs to find out what I thought I was thinking(!)
when I made a change some months in the past.  Of course, I'm veering
rather off-topic, so I'll stop now....

Cheers,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david@dhw.vip.best.com
As a computing professional, I believe it would be unethical for me to
advise, recommend, or support the use (save possibly for personal
amusement) of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product.