Ubuntu

file:/var/log/messages ??

Asked by kaykav

 Good Evening,
                        There are 'messages' in (/var/log). What are these so called messages?......Thank You....Rich

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Best corenominal (corenominal) said : 		#1

Hi Rich

The messages or message log file at "/var/log/messages/" contains general system-generated messages and related info. It is a system log file and is useful for debugging/problem solving. It is common to all Linux distributions.

You can view the log files in a friendly graphical user interface by entering the following terminal command:
gnome-system-log &

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Philip

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bixejo (bixo-bixejo) said : 		#2

Maybe it would be advisable to provide also some safe way to delete old files in /var/log directory, as they may eventually eat your whole filesystem.

From what I see in /var/log, I figure out that old backups of "whatever" file are saved in the form of "whatever.N.gz", where N stands for an integer number (the older the file is, the greater the number.) I guess one may safely delete the oldest ones (I've been doing so, and no problem so far), but I'm not utterly sure.

Regards,

--Bixejo

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kaykav (kaykav) said : 		#3

Thanks Philip Newborough, that solved my question.