Issue
In Linux, I know how to write a simply message to the /var/log/messages file, in a simple shell script I created:
#!/bin/bash
logger "have fun!"
I want to stop throwing messages into the default /var/log/messages file, and create my own.
I tried this:
#!/bin/bash
logger "have more fun" > /var/log/mycustomlog
It still logs to /var/log/messages. It did create the /var/log/mycustomlog, but it's empty.
Anyone see what I'm missing?
Solution
logger logs to syslog facilities. If you want the message to go to a particular file you have to modify the syslog configuration accordingly. You could add a line like this:
local7.* -/var/log/mycustomlog
and restart syslog. Then you can log like this:
logger -p local7.info "information message"
logger -p local7.err "error message"
and the messages will appear in the desired logfile with the correct log level.
Without making changes to the syslog configuration you could use logger like this:
logger -s "foo bar" 2>> /var/log/mycustomlog
Specifying -s or --stderr instructs logger to print the message to STDERR as well (in addition to logging it to syslog), so you could redirect STDERR to a file. However, it would be utterly pointless, because the message is already logged via syslog anyway (with the default priority user.notice). Note that we use here 2>> to append standard error to the file named.
Answered By - Ansgar Wiechers Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (WPSolving Admin)
