Where does linux store my syslog? - c

I wrote a simple test application to log something in a log file. I am using linux mint and after the application executes I try to view the log using this command:
tail -n 100 /var/log/messages
but the file messages does not exist neither tested or something. Below you can find my code. Maybe I am doing something wrong, the file isn't stored there or I need to enable logging in linux mint.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <syslog.h>
void init_log()
{
setlogmask(LOG_UPTO(LOG_NOTICE));
openlog("testd",LOG_CONS | LOG_PID | LOG_NDELAY, LOG_LOCAL1);
}
int main(void) {
init_log();
printf("Session started!");
syslog(LOG_NOTICE, "Session started!!");
closelog();
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

On my Ubuntu machine, I can see the output at /var/log/syslog.
On a RHEL/CentOS machine, the output is found in /var/log/messages.
This is controlled by the rsyslog service, so if this is disabled for some reason you may need to start it with systemctl start rsyslog.
As noted by others, your syslog() output would be logged by the /var/log/syslog file.
You can see system, user, and other logs at /var/log.
For more details: here's an interesting link.

Default log location (rhel) are
General messages:
/var/log/messages
Authentication messages:
/var/log/secure
Mail events:
/var/log/maillog
Check your /etc/syslog.conf or /etc/syslog-ng.conf (it depends on which of syslog facility you have installed)
Example:
$ cat /etc/syslog.conf
# Log anything (except mail) of level info or higher.
# Don't log private authentication messages!
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none /var/log/messages
# The authpriv file has restricted access.
authpriv.* /var/log/secure
# Log all the mail messages in one place.
mail.* /var/log/maillog
#For a start, use this simplified approach.
*.* /var/log/messages

In addition to the accepted answer, it is useful to know the following ...
Each of those functions should have manual pages associated with them.
If you run man -k syslog (a keyword search of man pages) you will get a list of man pages that refer to, or are about syslog
$ man -k syslog
logger (1) - a shell command interface to the syslog(3) system l...
rsyslog.conf (5) - rsyslogd(8) configuration file
rsyslogd (8) - reliable and extended syslogd
syslog (2) - read and/or clear kernel message ring buffer; set c...
syslog (3) - send messages to the system logger
vsyslog (3) - send messages to the system logger
You need to understand the manual sections in order to delve further.
Here's an excerpt from the man page for man, that explains man page sections :
The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by
the types of pages they contain.
1 Executable programs or shell commands
2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
3 Library calls (functions within program libraries)
4 Special files (usually found in /dev)
5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
6 Games
7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conven‐
tions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
8 System administration commands (usually only for root)
9 Kernel routines [Non standard]
To read the above run
$man man
So, if you run man 3 syslog you get a full manual page for the syslog function that you called in your code.
SYSLOG(3) Linux Programmer's Manual SYSLOG(3)
NAME
closelog, openlog, syslog, vsyslog - send messages to the system
logger
SYNOPSIS
#include <syslog.h>
void openlog(const char *ident, int option, int facility);
void syslog(int priority, const char *format, ...);
void closelog(void);
#include <stdarg.h>
void vsyslog(int priority, const char *format, va_list ap);
Not a direct answer but hopefully you will find this useful.

You have to tell the system what information to log and where to put the info. Logging is configured in the /etc/rsyslog.conf file, then restart rsyslog to load the new config. The default logging rules are usually in a /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf file.

syslog() generates a log message, which will be distributed by syslogd.
The file to configure syslogd is /etc/syslog.conf.
This file will tell your where the messages are logged.
How to change options in this file ?
Here you go
http://www.bo.infn.it/alice/alice-doc/mll-doc/duix/admgde/node74.html

Logging is very configurable in Linux, and you might want to look into your /etc/syslog.conf (or perhaps under /etc/rsyslog.d/). Details depend upon the logging subsystem, and the distribution.
Look also into files under /var/log/ (and perhaps run dmesg for kernel logs).

I'm running Ubuntu under WSL(Windows Subsystem for Linux) and systemctl start rsyslog didn't work for me.
So what I did is this:
$ service rsyslog start
Now syslog file will appear at /var/log/

Related

Capture QEMU Semihosted I/O

For unit testing purposes, I want to be able to run a bare-metal binary with qemu and capture it's output.
Sample file:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
static void qemu_exit() {
register uint32_t r0 __asm__("r0");
r0 = 0x18;
register uint32_t r1 __asm__("r1");
r1 = 0x20026;
__asm__ volatile("bkpt #0xAB");
}
int main(void) {
puts("This is some example text that I want to capture");
qemu_exit();
return 0;
}
Running with:
qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse --nographic --no-reboot \
--board STM32F4-Discovery --mcu STM32F429ZI \
--semihosting-config enable=on,target=native \
--image <binary>
Displayed to the console is:
QEMU 2.8.0-13 monitor - type 'help' for more information
(qemu) This is some example text that I want to capture
This 'example text' is generated within QEMU and so redirecting stdout to a file does not capture it (only: QEMU 2.8.0-13 monitor - type 'help' for more information
(qemu)). Looking at the available qemu logging options -d help does not offer anything as far as I can see.
EDIT
A hacky solution is to use script to capture terminal session:
script --quiet --command <qemu-shell-script-wrapper>
That's not an upstream QEMU, and 2.8 is also quite old, but hopefully the same things that work with upstream QEMU will work there.
Firstly, assuming you're not actually using the monitor, you can get rid of that part of the output by dropping '--nographic' and instead using '-display none'. (--nographic does a lot of things all at once, including both "no graphical display" and also "default serial output to the terminal, add a QEMU monitor and multiplex the monitor and the serial", among other things. It's convenient if that's what you want but sometimes it's less confusing to specify everything separately.)
Secondly, you say you're using semihosting output but is the guest's stdlib definitely using semihosting for its puts() string output and not serial port (UART) output? The output will come out on the terminal either way but how you tell QEMU to redirect it somewhere else will differ. (I suspect it may be using UART output, because if it were using semihosting output then the redirection of stdout that you tried should have worked.)
If the output from the guest is via the serial port then you can control where it goes using the '-serial' option (most simply, "-serial stdio" to send to stdout, but you can also do more complicated things like sending to files, pipes or TCP sockets.). If it's via semihosting then you can control where it goes using the 'chardev=id' suboption of -semihosting-config.

Mac kernel programming generic kernel extension prinf() not working

I've followed the Creating a Generic Kernel Extension with Xcode tutorial.
MyKext.c:
#include <sys/systm.h>
#include <mach/mach_types.h>
kern_return_t MyKext_start (kmod_info_t * ki, void * d)
{
printf("MyKext has started.\n");
return KERN_SUCCESS;
}
kern_return_t MyKext_stop (kmod_info_t * ki, void * d)
{
printf("MyKext has stopped.\n");
return KERN_SUCCESS;
}
I've also disabled the csrutil, which allow me to load my own kext.
# csrutil disable
When I load my own kext into kernel
$ sudo kextload -v /tmp/MyKext.kext
The result of printf() not write into /var/log/system.log.
I've also set boot-args
$ sudo nvram boot-args="original_contents debug=0x4"
Can anyone help me out?
Apparently, since Sierra (10.12) at least, they reorganized the way the logs are written (iOS support?), so you cannot see it in system.log anymore. Still, in your Console application, you have in the sidebar a Devices section, where you can select your device (usually your Mac system) and see real-time log limited to "kernel" in the search box. So I can see these when using kext load/kextunload:
default 11:58:27.608228 +0200 kernel MyKext has started.
default 11:58:34.446824 +0200 kernel MyKext has stopped.
default 11:58:44.803350 +0200 kernel MyKext has started.
There is no need for the csrutil and nvram changes.
Important For some freaky reason, I needed to restart the Console to reflect my messages changes, otherwise it has showing the ones (start & stop) from the previous build. Very strange indeed!
Later To recover old logs, try sudo log collect --last 1d and open the result with Console(more here).
Sorry to necro-post, but I found it useful to use log(1) with one of its many commands (as suggested by #pmdj in the comments above) rather than use Console. From the manual:
log -- Access system wide log messages created by os_log, os_trace and other log-
ging systems.
For example, one can run:
log stream
to see real-time output of the system, including printf() from the MacOS kernel extension.

Can't Find "Syslog.conf" in linux kernal 2.6.37.6 created with BuysBox v1.19.3

I created a tiny OS for my controller with Linux kernel 2.6.37.6 with the help of BusyBox and tool chain. I am writing a logging module(C program) in it and i want customized logs(customized path for different logs) like in /log/.
I have syslogd in my machine and /etc/syslog.conf supposed to present in my machine but it's not it the place. I created new syslog.conf under /etc but still i can't find my logs in desired place.
But if i run command syslogd -O /log/Controller.log all logs started to redirect to this (specified file). So i want to know where is the configuration file for this syslogd i can't find the configuration file for it.
Is there any way that i can write a module(program) for LOGS without requiring syslog.conf and yes of course traditional printf way. Problem is that for customized paths for log we need to give keyname LOG_LOCAL1 in openlog() as a argument but it's not working
I followed procedure from this examples http://www.codealias.info/technotes/syslog_simple_example
If you are using Busybox's syslogd then there is no support of syslog.conf,all logs are written to /var/log/messages by default.
You can modify code of syslogd in busybox which is located in busybox/sysklogd/syslogd.c for your desire behaviour
You can change code of syslogd like this
static const struct init_globals init_data = {
.logFile = {
.path = "your desire path",
.fd = -1,
},

what happens if an application open more than one connection to syslog?

I have an application that uses syslog for logging. another library within this application explicitly calls openlog() for its own usage, in this case something strange happens: stderr output is sent to a tcp socket I already opened.
When I change the lib's output log to stderr or stdout everything works fine.
I was wondering if this a problem with two syslog connection or is it just a mess-up somewhere in the code?
This is syslog initialisation of the main app:
openlog( "app", LOG_PID|LOG_NDELAY, LOG_LOCAL1 );
This is syslog initialisation of the lib:
openlog("lib", LOG_CONS | LOG_PID | LOG_NDELAY, LOG_LOCAL1);
It is probably implementation dependent. If you use MUSL libc the code is here in syslog.c an you can see that only one fd is used for syslog (so two openlog-s are sharing the same log_fd). Look into GNU libc source code to see what happens on most Linux implementations. You might also investigate with strace or ltrace

Linux-kernel: printk from "open" syscall don't work

I have a doubt.
I opened the kernel and I changed the directory linux-3.1.1/fs/open.c
I changed the follow code in the open.c.
SYSCALL_DEFINE3(open, const char __user *, filename, int, flags, int, mode)
{
long ret;
printk(KERN_EMERG "Testing\n");
...
}
I put this line only: printk(KERN_EMERG "Testing");
And I include the libraries:<linux/kernel.h> and <linux/printk.h>
So I compiled and rebooted my linux(Ubuntu).
During the rebooting appeared a lot of "Testing" on the screen.
So up to now its Ok.
But now I have a problem.
I created this program in c.
int main()
{
size_t filedesc = open("testefile2.txt",O_CREAT | O_WRONLY,0640);
printf("%d",filedesc);
}
I compiled this program and executed and works good.
But I don´t understand why the "Testing" didn't appeared on the shell.
I mean , if when I reboot the pc appeared a lot of the word "Testing" , why this word doens´t appear when I execute the program above.
Just to add I include this libraries in this code above:
unistd.h , fcntl.h , stdio.h , stdlib.h
Thank you guys.
printk calls appear in the kernel message buffer, not in your process' stdout/stderr
But I don´t understand why the "Testing" didn't appeared on the shell.
I think, this is effect of printk's messages suppression. (more exactly:rate limiting)
Check the messages log or console for
printk: ### messages suppressed.
string.
This feature will stop printing a message, if there were a lot of messages in recent time.
Actual code is as 3.1 kernel: http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v3.1.1/kernel/printk.c#L1621
1621 * printk rate limiting, lifted from the networking subsystem.
1622 *
1623 * This enforces a rate limit: not more than 10 kernel messages
1624 * every 5s to make a denial-of-service attack impossible.
1625 */
1626 DEFINE_RATELIMIT_STATE(printk_ratelimit_state, 5 * HZ, 10);
1627
1628 int __printk_ratelimit(const char *func)
So, As the open syscall is very-very popular (just do an strace -e open /bin/ls - I'll get 15 open syscalls for just starting an simplest ls), the rate limiting will be in effect. It will limit your message to be printed only one time in 5 seconds; not more than 10 messages in single "burst".
I can only suggest to create a special user with known UID and add an UID checking before printk in your additional printk-in-open code.

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