linux log files, location and description

linux log files, location and description
Linux stores logs of almost everything from user accounting to system halts. These logs are always useful to debug problems or track the loophole of any configurations. Logs are the records of system activity to assure the faults, traffic activities, configuration logs, user activity logs. Main Linux log files are situated at /var/logs by default. While it is also possible to define the log file in a custom path in the configuration files and this is usually not recommended. Major log files in Linux are described below.

/var/log/messages ——–>contains standard I/O logs, DNS logs, DHCP, NFS, NIS
/var/log/boot.log ——–>contains boot time logs about system shutdown, reboot
/var/log/dmesg ——–>hardware specific logs
/var/log/xferlog ——–>logs of FTP actities includes uploads, downloads, user processes
/var/log/samba ——–>logs of samba services(windows)
/var/log/httpd/* ——–>logs of all web activities, apache web server
/var/log/secure ——–>logs of SSH, telnet and authentication services
/var/log/cups/* ——–>logs of print activities
/var/log/cron ——–>logs of system activities from cron jobs
/var/log/xorg/* ——–>GUI related logs
/var/log/auth.log ——–>Authentication related logs
/var/log/kern.log ——–>Kernel logs
/var/log/maillog ——–>mail server logs
/var/log/mysqld.log ——–>logs from mysql activities
var/log/yum.log ——–>logs of yum activities includes packages downloads

Besides these, log files are created automatically after each package configurations.