Ubuntu – Not getting anything written to the log files in ubuntu

loggingsyslogUbuntuubuntu-12.04

I am not getting any logs in auth.log, kern.log, syslog or any other log files on my 12.04 ubuntu server. There is also no rsyslog.conf if it should be there by default.

rsyslogd is not running as well.

How can I debug this & get the log files written normally as they should be ?

Edit:

I just found that rsyslog was not installed at all by default on my ubuntu 12.04. After installing it via apt-get I can see log files being written.

But is it really like I need to manually install rsyslog to see the logs, otherwise I won't be getting anything in the logs ??

Best Answer

Have you tried (re)starting rsyslogd manually? If yes pleas epost the output.

Is there space left on the device hosting /var/log/ and is it mounted rw?

mount | column -t

Does 

dmesg

contain anything that might relate to this issue?

Added Question #2

But is it really like I need to manually install rsyslog to see the logs, otherwise I won't be getting anything in the logs ??

Rsyslog is the default log processor on Ubuntu 12.04 and is usually installed by default! I experienced this especially with customized installations and minimal server/VPS setups of some hosting providers. The same applies to manual installations by using the tool debootstrap.

On a stock Ubuntu 12.04 installation rsyslogd is already running and configured for basic operation! So in general you don't have to install it manually ...

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