Linux Administration Cookbook

Changing the daemon logging level

There are several levels that SSH can log at, dictated by the LogLevel setting:

# Logging#SyslogFacility AUTHSyslogFacility AUTHPRIV#LogLevel INFO

The possibilities are QUIET, FATAL, ERROR, INFO, VERBOSE, DEBUG, DEBUG1, DEBUG2, and DEBUG3.

The SSH daemon manual lists the DEBUG options as all violating the privacy of users, and therefore it is not recommended that you use them.

We're going to bump this up to VERBOSE:

# Logging#SyslogFacility AUTHSyslogFacility AUTHPRIVLogLevel VERBOSE

Restart the SSH daemon:

[vagrant@centos2 ~]$ sudo systemctl restart sshd

Now, let's have a look at what difference that made.

Here's our secure log at INFO level:

[vagrant@centos2 ~]$ sudo grep "1137" /var/log/secureAug 7 16:40:44 ...