From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D57F138A1A for ; Tue, 17 Feb 2015 22:52:04 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2211FE08DA; Tue, 17 Feb 2015 22:51:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smarthost01d.mail.zen.net.uk (smarthost01d.mail.zen.net.uk [212.23.1.7]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC412E08B8 for ; Tue, 17 Feb 2015 22:51:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [82.69.80.10] (helo=wstn.localnet) by smarthost01d.mail.zen.net.uk with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1YNqzj-0002zY-VR for gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Tue, 17 Feb 2015 22:51:56 +0000 From: Peter Humphrey To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] syslog-ng: how to read the log files Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 22:51:55 +0000 Message-ID: <5053257.RtBGZSofvK@wstn> Organization: Society for Retired Gentlefolk User-Agent: KMail/4.14.3 (Linux/3.17.8-gentoo-r1; KDE/4.14.3; x86_64; ; ) In-Reply-To: References: <87lhjws8ci.fsf@heimdali.yagibdah.de> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Originating-smarthost01d-IP: [82.69.80.10] X-Archives-Salt: 4c30005c-b313-4d12-97e3-4155ec5564b4 X-Archives-Hash: 9bd7c60cc6053e4835200cb0a5b72041 On Tuesday 17 February 2015 20:41:06 Matti Nykyri wrote: > > On Feb 17, 2015, at 20:26, lee wrote: > > how do you read the log files when using syslog-ng? > > The log file seem to be some sort of binary that doesn't display too > > well in less, and there doesn't seem to be any way to read them. > > This was discussed earlier on this list... Actually what syslog-ng > produces is plain text. There seemed to be a bug that creates some > binary (i.e. unreadable characters) and that causes less to consider > files to be binary and show them incorrectly. Yes, that was me. I found that something had marked /var/log/messages as a binary file. There's nothing in it that can't be read, no mysterious characters or anything; it's just marked as binary. All you have to do is to move it, then cat it back into place. I did that with no ill effects. -- Rgds Peter.