*BSD News Article 96476


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From: Tony Griffiths <tonyg@OntheNet.com.au>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: /var/log/messages stopped???
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 15:09:18 +1000
Organization: On the Net (ISP on the Gold Coast, Australia)
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Daniel Walton wrote:
> 
> I have been doing some work on a FreeBSD system that required me to
> change the root crontab.  I first checked the root crontab but I
> didn't find anything in it.  Maybe I didn't look good enough because
> about the same time I changed the root crontab the /var/log/messages
> file stopped updating.  Is this related to the crontab and how do I
> get this going again?

No, no relation at all.  The file "/var/log/messages" is written to by
syslogd which gets it's input from the "/dev/log" device.  You havn't
played with anything in /dev or managed to kill of syslogd by any
chance?

Also, if you want to manually 'rotate' the messages file, you need to
rename the existing one, and then _EXPLICITELY_ create a new one via
touch (or whatever) before HUPing syslogd.

Tony