/var/log/messages empty since June 26 :-/

[Matthew Seaman]

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On 02/07/2010 12:11:16, Gilles wrote:
> Hello
> 
> 	On a FreeBSD 6.3 server sitting in a corner of the office not doing
> much work,  I noticed that /var/log/messages was turned over and has
> been empty since 26 June:
> 
> # tail /var/log/messages
> Jun 26 16:00:00 freebsd newsyslog[5320]: logfile turned over due to
> size>100K
> 
> # ll /var/log/        
> -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel          78 26 jui 16:00 messages
> -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel        8396 26 jui 16:00 messages.0.bz2
> -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel        8329 30 mar 11:00 messages.1.bz2
> -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel        8663  2 mar  2009 messages.2.bz2
> -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel        9640 20 déc  2008 messages.3.bz2
> -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel        6554 17 oct  2008 messages.4.bz2
> -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel        5825 17 oct  2008 messages.5.bz2
> (jui = June, jul = July)
> 
> I don't have enough experience with FreeBSD to understand the cause
> for this, and how to solve it, so would appreciate any suggestion.

Is syslogd running?  Restarting syslogd would be a good thing to try in
any case:

   # /etc/rc.d/syslogd restart

This should result in some output to the system logs -- if you don't see
that, then your syslog.conf may be broken: syslogd can die silently in
those circumstances.  You'll need to run syslogd with the '-d' debugging
flag in addition to what flags you usually use in order to see what the
problem is.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

- -- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
JID: matthew at infracaninophile.co.uk               Kent, CT11 9PW
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