Linux Server Security, Second Edition

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Chapter 12: System Log Management and Monitoring

Example 12-24, presented in the form of an actual script, generates messages for all

facilities at each priority level.

Logger works with both syslog and Syslog-ng.

Managing System Logfiles with logrotate

Configuring and fine-tuning your system-logging facilities is extremely important for

system security and general diagnostics. But if your logs grow too large and fill up

their filesystem, all that work will be counterproductive.

As with syslog itself, most Linux distributions come with a preconfigured log-rota-

tion scheme; on most of these distributions, this scheme is built on the utility

logrotate. As with syslog, while this default scheme tends to work adequately for

many users, it’s too important a mechanism to take for granted. It behooves you to

understand, periodically evaluate, and if necessary, customize your log-management

setup.

Example 12-24. Generating even more test messages with a bash script

#!/bin/bash

for i in {auth,auth-priv,cron,daemon,kern,lpr,mail,mark,news,syslog,user,uucp,local0,

local1,local2,local3,local4,local5,local6,local7} # (this is all one line!)

do

for k in {debug,info,notice,warning,err,crit,alert,emerg}

do

logger -p $i.$k "Test daemon message, facility $i priority $k"

done

done

Just What Do We Mean By ...