HP-UX Internet Services Administrator's Guide (February 2007)

Each line in /etc/syslog.conf has a selector and an action. The selector specifies
which part of the system generated the message and what priority the message has.
The action specifies where the message should be sent.
The part of the selector that specifies where a message comes from is called the facility.
All Internet daemons and servers, except sendmail, log messages to the daemon
facility. sendmail logs messages to the mail facility. syslogd logs messages to the
syslog facility. You can indicate all facilities in the configuration file with an asterisk
(*).
The part of the selector that specifies what priority a message has is called the level.
Selector levels are debug, information, notice, warning, error, alert,
emergency, and critical. A message must be at or above the level you specify in
order to be logged.
The action allows you to specify where messages should be directed. You can have the
messages directed to files, users, the console, or to a syslogd running on another host.
The following is the default configuration for /etc/syslog.conf:
mail.debug /var/adm/syslog/mail.log *.info,mail.none /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log
*.alert *.alert /det/console root *.emerg *
With this configuration, all mail log messages at the debug level or higher are sent to
/var/adm/syslog/mail.log. Log messages from any facility at the information
level or higher (but no mail messages) are sent to /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log.
Log messages from any facility at the alert level or higher are sent to the console and
to any terminal where the superuser is logged in. All messages at the emergency level
or higher are sent to all users on the system.
For more information about syslogd and its configuration file, type man 3C syslog
or man 1M syslogd at the HP-UX prompt.
Maintaining System Log Files
The log files specified in your syslogd configuration can fill up your disk if you do
not monitor their size. To control the size of these files, do the following:
1. Remove or rename your log files as in the following example:
cd /var/adm/syslog mv mail.log mail.log.old mv syslog.log sylog.log.old
2. Restart syslogd with the following commands:
cd /sbin/init.d syslogd stop syslogd start
When you reboot your system, each log file is moved to filename.old automatically,
and new log files are started.
34 Installing and Configuring Internet Services