• Get Back /var/log/messages in (K)ubuntu 11.04

    Date: 2011.06.21 | Category: Linux, Tech Stuff | Tags:

    I can’t claim to understand the reasoning behind getting rid of /var/log/messages in Natty. It’s the number one place to start looking when something goes wrong, and one of the first places people asking for community help are told to go look and report back in order to debug some situation. Either way, to right this wrong is definitely very easy, so just fire up a terminal and type:

    ?View Code BASH
    you@your-puter:~$ sudo nano /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf

    In nano, find the commented out lines mentioning “/var/log/messages”, and uncomment them.
    Tip: Search by pressing Ctrl+W, then type in messages and press enter.

    You should be uncommenting four lines, and ending up with this:

    ?View Code NANO
    *.=info;*.=notice;*.=warn;
        auth,authpriv.none;
        cron,daemon.none;
        mail,news.none          -/var/log/messages

    Save it and exit (Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X), then restart the syslog daemon:

    ?View Code BASH
    you@your-puter:~$ sudo service rsyslog restart

    That’s it. /var/log/messages is back :)