Troubleshooting CentOS

Reading log files and affecting the output

Viewing or reading a log file is very easy and depending on your personal preferences, the basic syntax to view any of these files can be expressed in any of the following formats:

# less /var/log/filename
# more /var/log/filename
# cat /var/log/filename
# cat /var/log/filename | less
# cat /var/log/filename | more

Note

Remember, depending on the system configuration, you may need root privileges to view a specific log file. The same can be said when you are attempting to make changes to any system files, and for this reason, we will continue as the root user. However, those who use sudo or su (switch user) should change the instructions accordingly.

Log files can vary between applications and services, ...