UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi to everyone. I'm new to this forum and also pretty new to Unix. I'm developing a cross-platform software and I need to register informational and error messages into the event log of the system. Under Windows, this is implemented so far, I need to implement it unded Unix by now.
I do know that the log file is just a text plain file, but I don't know where is it store and wich is its structure.
I would appreciate any suggestions and advice you have to me.
Best regards.

You use the system logging daemon to write events to log files, see man 3 syslog for details.

Thanks for your reply. I'm using Ubuntu 9, when I execute man command it says "No manual entry for syslog".

On Ubuntu, try:

man syslogd or man syslog.conf

So, I must to write into syslog file according the rules specified in syslog.conf, isn't that right?. If it is so, where is it located?.

No.

syslogd must be running, started by root.

The syslog command then writes to the syslog file.

Code:

syslog [facility] [message text]

Read the manpage for syslogd all the way from top to bottom, please.,

I read it, but I think I misunderstood something. Let me get this right:

- There's a file to log the system events
- The only way I have access to that file is by calling syslog or may be through signal

And I wonder now if I could make my own log file so the event visor in Ubuntu can display it. Is there a way of doing it?
I'm sorry if I'm still misunderstanding something here. There're a punch of times that I don't get the hole idea of a phrase in english and translators doesn't help on that either.

Best regards.