Log Files


 
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# 1  
Old 07-26-2007
Log Files

Hello, I have a rather broad question here. I've been a Unix Administrator now for about 2 years and the one part of my job that gives me a headache is reading log files. While some of the messages are rather straight forward to understand, there are still some messages that might as well be written in Latin. I know there are dozens of utilities out there to help read log files and to parse out the messages of concern from the fluff, but I'd like to know exactly line-by-line what each message means. Does anyone have any advice on books I could pick up, newsgroups I could read, man pages to pour over, anything to help me understand exactly what my system is telling me?

Thanks.
# 2  
Old 07-27-2007
i am not an expert in this area, but here is one place i found that gives general understanding: "Administrator's Guide": Understanding Log Files

i think understanding every message line by line would require detailed study, and information required for that won't be available at one place (this is my opinion and may be wrong).
# 3  
Old 07-27-2007
It really depends what king of logs... I mean, you can have many applications on your server, but there are different format of loggin used, so it's almost imposible to know what this and that means. I have this exampe in mind :
"Premature end of script headers" in apache logs, when some php or cgi script fails - this error message doesn't help much eh ? Smilie
I suggest that you just google whatever message you have doubts for, it would be more time effective.
The link from Yogesh seems pretty good Smilie
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