Special Edition Using Linux®, Sixth Edition

Toubleshooting

I've set up syslog and it seems to be sending entries to /var/log/messages, but how do I read them?

In general, syslog entries will be different depending on the facility sending the message. However, some parts will always look the same. Syslog itself prepends the system date and time the message was received by syslog, the name of the system (in case it is acting as a central logging host), and the particular facility that sent the message (usually with the PID of the daemon in square brackets). After that it just logs whatever it was sent to log from that facility, so you'll have to refer to the particular daemon's documentation for interpretation.

I want to send the same messages to several logs. How can I do this?

This depends ...