This command will open the syslog log file to the top. To do that, you could quickly issue the command less /var/log/syslog. Say you want to view the contents of that particular log file. This particular log file logs everything except auth-related messages. One of the most important logs contained within /var/log is syslog.

Now, let’s take a peek into one of those logs. Now issue the command ls and you will see the logs housed within this directory ( Figure 1 ).įigure 1: A listing of log files found in /var/log/. Open up a terminal window and issue the command cd /var/log. This is such a crucial folder on your Linux systems. And the key issue here is, how do you view those log files?įortunately there are numerous ways in which you can view your system logs, all quite simply executed from the command line. We are going to be focus on system logs, as that is where the heart of Linux troubleshooting lies. Where a desktop application will write logs will depend upon the developer and if the app allows for custom log configuration. For desktop app-specific issues, log files will be written to different locations (e.g., Thunderbird writes crash reports to ‘~/.thunderbird/Crash Reports’). These are all system and service logs, those which you will lean on heavily when there is an issue with your operating system or one of the major services. Most log files can be found in one convenient location: /var/log. In fact, every seasoned administrator will immediately tell you that the first thing to be done, when a problem arises, is to view the logs.Īnd there are plenty of logs to be found: logs for the system, logs for the kernel, for package managers, for Xorg, for the boot process, for Apache, for MySQL… For nearly anything you can think of, there is a log file. After all, they are there for one very important reason…to help you troubleshoot an issue. Learn how to easily check Linux logs in this article from our archives.Īt some point in your career as a Linux administrator, you are going to have to view log files.

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