06-26-2015
AIX has at least 3 logging facilities and 1 auditing facility.
Logging facilities are:
- syslog
- errlog
- alog
All 3 facilities make a little different things. Through alog you can see e.g. boot-time or console messages. Errlog logs mostly hardware-related messages. Syslog is a standard UNIX logging mechanism.
If you do a security assessment, the usual question is - what must be logged in your branch and in your country? There are a lot of different regulations for different branches (financial, healthcare, stock exchanges, human resources, and so on) and in different countries - rules for an US-based company are not the same as rules for an European- or a Chinese company.
All logging and auditing facilities must be configured according to your local requirements. It is not where a sysadmin has right to say something. It is your local authorities who say the word.
After you have your requirements it is easier to decide what should be written in a configuration file to receive the information you require on the central logging server. If you can't analyze the received information, because you've never seen UNIX logs, you have to hire some experienced guy or can try to post example log entries (if they are not tooo sensitive for your organization) here and forum members will try to explain the logs to you.
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LEARN ABOUT OSF1
syslog.conf
syslog.conf(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual syslog.conf(4)
NAME
syslog.conf - syslogd configuration file
SYNOPSIS
facility.severity destination Where: Is part of the system generating the message, specified in /usr/include/sys/syslog_pri.h.
See also the syslogd(8) reference page. The severity level, which can be emerg, alert, crit, err, warning, notice, info, or debug. See
/usr/include/sys/syslog_pri.h.
The syslogd daemon logs all messages of the specified severity level plus all messages of greater severity. For example, if you
specify level err, all messages of levels err, crit, alert, and emerg or panic are logged. A local file pathname to a log file, a
host name for remote logging or a list of users. In the latter case the users will receive messages when they are logged in. An
asterisk (*) causes a message to be sent to all users who are currently logged in.
DESCRIPTION
The /etc/syslog.conf file is a system file that enables you to configure or filter events that are to be logged by syslogd. You can specify
more than one facility and its severity level by separating them with semicolons.
You can specify more than one facility logs to the same file by separating the facilities with commas, as shown in the EXAMPLES section.
The syslogd daemon ignores blank lines and lines that begin with an octothorpe (#). You can specify # as the first character in a line to
include comments in the file or to disable an entry. The facility and severity level are separated from the destination by one or more tab
characters.
If you want the syslogd daemon to use a configuration file other than the default, you must specify the file name with the following com-
mand: # syslogd -f config_file
Daily Log Files
You can specify in the /etc/syslog.conf file that the syslogd daemon create daily log files. To create daily log files, use the following
syntax to specify the path name of the message destination: /var/adm/syslog.dated/ { file} The file variable specifies the name of the log
file, for example, mail.log or kern.log. If you specify a /var/adm/syslog.dated/file path name destination, each day the syslogd daemon
creates a sub-directory under the /var/adm/syslog.dated directory and a log file in the sub-directory, using the following syntax:
/var/adm/syslog.dated/ date / file Where: The date variable specifies the day, month, and time that the log file was created. The file
variable specifies the name of the log file you previously specified in the /etc/syslog.conf file. The syslogd daemon automatically cre-
ates a new date directory every 24 hours and also when you boot the system. The current directory is a link to the latest date directory.
To get the latest logs, you only need to reference the /var/adm/syslog.dated/current directory.
EXAMPLES
The following is a sample /etc/syslog.conf file: # # syslogd config file # # facilities: kern user mail daemon auth syslog lpr binary #
priorities: emerg alert crit err warning notice info debug # kern.debug /var/adm/syslog.dated/kern.log user.debug /var/adm/sys-
log.dated/user.log daemon.debug /var/adm/syslog.dated/daemon.log auth.crit;syslog.debug /var/adm/syslog.dated/syslog.log mail,lpr.debug
/var/adm/syslog.dated/misc.log msgbuf.err /var/adm/crash.dated/msgbuf.savecore kern.debug /var/adm/messages kern.debug /dev/console *.emerg
*
FILES
/etc/syslog.conf
/etc/syslog.auth - Authorization file for remote logging.
/usr/include/sys/syslog_pri.h - Common components of a syslog event log record.
RELATED INFORMATION
Commands: /usr/sbin/syslogd(8), /usr/sbin/binlogd(8)
System Administration delim off
syslog.conf(4)