25.2. Locating Log Files

A list of log files maintained by rsyslogd can be found in the /etc/rsyslog.conf configuration file. Most log files are located in the /var/log/ directory. Some applications such as httpd and samba have a directory within /var/log/ for their log files.

You may notice multiple files in the /var/log/ directory with numbers after them (for example, cron-20100906). These numbers represent a time stamp that has been added to a rotated log file. Log files are rotated so their file sizes do not become too large. The logrotate package contains a cron task that automatically rotates log files according to the /etc/logrotate.conf configuration file and the configuration files in the /etc/logrotate.d/ directory.