Locating Log Files

Most log files are located in the /var/log/ directory. Some applications such as httpd and samba have a directory within /var/log/ for their log files.

You may notice multiple files in the log file directory with numbers after them. These are created when the log files are rotated. Log files are rotated so their file sizes do not become too large. The logrotate package contains a cron task that automatically rotates log files according to the /etc/logrotate.conf configuration file and the configuration files in the /etc/logrotate.d/ directory. By default, it is configured to rotate every week and keep four weeks worth of previous log files.