Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: Can the Linux desktop installed base ever break the mythical 10% barrier? Google has been refactoring ChromeOS, and GNOME is working on new window manager ideas. (more…)
Recently, I found myself in the position of investigating the root cause of a booting failure in an embedded device. To diagnose the problem effectively, I relied on syslogs, which proved to be invaluable. Syslogs, or system logs, are a crucial element of Linux systems, as they capture and retain important data about different events and actions. In this article, we will emphasize the importance of syslogs in Linux and examine the various facilities and levels utilized to classify and prioritize log messages.
Facilities in syslogs are used to categorize log messages based on their sources or purposes. They provide a way to differentiate between various components of a Linux system.
Photo from RFC5424
Syslog levels indicate the severity or importance of log messages. They help prioritize and filter log entries based on their significance.
For easier debugging, you can clear out the syslog before running the user application for investigation and to get fewer lines of logs. To clear out the syslogs, you can either truncate or delete them.
Remember that clearing syslogs removes log history, so ensure you don’t require the information for troubleshooting, analysis, or compliance purposes before clearing the logs. Additionally, clearing logs may require administrative privileges, so you may need to use the command or run the commands as the root user.
After clearing the syslog, remember to restart the rsyslog. Otherwise, your application won’t be able to log your user-level messages. Below is an example in Ubuntu on how to truncate, remove and restart the service.
This is a simple C++ code that generates a log message for the facility user that indicates an informational message.
In this example, we include the <syslog.h> header file, which provides the necessary functions and constants for syslog logging. The <openlog() function is used to open a connection to the syslog service, specifying a custom identifier (“SyslogSampleApp”) for our application, the logging options (LOG_PID to include process ID), and the facility (LOG_USER for user-level messages).
We then use the syslog() function to generate log messages of different levels. In this case, we create a user-level message using LOG_INFO. You can adjust the log levels based on your specific needs.
Finally, we close the syslog connection closelog() to release any resources associated with the syslog service.
Viewing your syslog depends on the Linux distribution that you’re using. /var/log/syslog is used for Debian and Ubuntu while /var/log/messages is used for Red Hat and CentOS.
Syslogs are an integral aspect of Linux systems, serving as a foundation for efficient monitoring, troubleshooting and analysis. They play a crucial role in capturing and organizing log messages across various facilities and levels. This categorization allows for valuable insights into system behavior, promotes effective issue resolution, and contributes to the overall maintenance of system health and security. It is essential to utilize the appropriate log level, such as LOG_INFO, to ensure that the syslog remains uncluttered and focused on the relevant scenario, avoiding the unnecessary inclusion of LOG_ERR entries.
Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: SUSE announces a Red Hat Enterprise Linux fork after Oracle said a similar thing, and Sarah Silverman says OpenAI and Meta have stolen her words. (more…)
Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) goes closed source. Well—no, not really; but IBM’s lawyers are accused of skating so close to the edge of legality that they risk violating the GNU Public License. (more…)
This week at its Red Hat Summit event, Red Hat introduced an expanded set of capabilities to Red Hat Insights that simplify management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
Managing Linux across the hybrid cloud is complex, and it’s made even more so because of current macroeconomic conditions and the challenge of finding and retaining highly skilled DevOps and IT professionals, said Gunnar Hellekson, vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat.
The enhanced Insights capabilities add a layer of abstraction to help reduce enterprise Linux complexity across the hybrid cloud and make RHEL management easier by lowering skill level requirements for managing Linux server estates, the company said.
Using a single UI, entry-level systems administrators and IT support teams can access Red Hat Insights’ predictive analytics to identify potential bugs, misconfigurations or security vulnerabilities and remediate them. Systems administrators of all skill levels can detect, assess and push fixes for potential problems without a deep understanding of Linux management systems like Red Hat Satellite Server and without having to interact with the command line, the company said.
These enhancements help organizations maintain services and systems even in uncertain macroeconomic times when hiring is constrained. Red Hat research also claimed that these enhanced capabilities enabled IT organizations to find IT issues up to 90% faster and remediate them nearly 66% faster across the hybrid cloud.
A Red Hat Insights image builder service also helps lower the skills level needed to manage Linux estates by enabling IT teams to build standardized, optimized operating system images, including the creation of their own ‘golden images’ that adhere to organization-specific needs for security and compliance. These images can be deployed across public clouds, hybrid clouds, data centers and the edge using the same console.
As the economic downturn continues, organizations are looking to do more with less and identify ways to make the most of the resources, talent and skillsets they already have. Red Hat is making the case for adding a layer of abstraction to allow less-highly-skilled IT and DevOps team members to contribute to managing Linux estates across hybrid, multi-cloud and edge deployments.
“The demands of managing Linux across the hybrid cloud are stretching the ability of resource-constrained IT departments to keep pace,” said Hellekson in a statement. “CIOs need to be able to extend existing skillsets and lower the skill barriers for overseeing Linux estates, which is exactly what the management capabilities of Red Hat Insights are designed to do.”
Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: A new Linux kernel drops and layoffs at Amazon Web Services point to trouble. (more…)
Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: Intel optimizes Linux multithreaded networking, data centers in space (again), and more DevOps toolmaker layoffs. (more…)
Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: Meta’s latest results are very bad, Apple wants its cut of Facebook ads, and Lennart Poettering proposes a new Secure Boot for Linux. (more…)
Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: Linux 6.0 promoted to Stable, Debian 12 will include closed-source binaries, and Google Cloud opens its first Africa region. (more…)
Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: Linus says next release will support Rust, FBI warns scammers are getting hired in deepfake interviews, and 80% of IBM staff stay at home. (more…)