sendmail, 4th Edition

Tuning syslog.conf

Although all messages are emitted by sendmail using a single facility, that of syslog, they need not all arrive at the same place. The disposition of messages is tuned by the syslog.conf file.

The file syslog.conf (usually located in the /etc directory) contains routing commands for use by syslog. That file can be complex because it is designed to handle messages from many programs other than sendmail, even messages from the kernel itself. Under SunOS, the syslog.conf file is also complex because it is preprocessed by m4(1) when it is read by syslog.

The file syslog.conf is composed of lines of text that each have the form:

facility.level           target

The facility is the type of program that may be producing the message. The facility called mail is the one that sendmail uses. For the complete list, see the online manual for syslog.conf(5).

The level indicates the severity at or above which messages should be handled. These levels correspond to the LogLevel option levels shown in Table 14-1 on page 515. The complete list of syslog.conf levels used by sendmail is shown in Table 14-2.

Table 14-2. syslog.conf levels used by sendmail

Level	Meaning of severity (highest to lowest)
alert	Conditions requiring immediate correction
crit	Critical conditions for which action can be deferred for a brief while
err	Other errors
warning	Warning messages
notice	Nonerrors that might require special handling
info	Statistical and informational messages
debug	Messages used only ...