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Danielsan

Member

Registered: 2020-07-14

Posts: 196  

[SOLVED] Where are my logs?

Hi guys,

How can I restore kern.log; messages.log; syslog; etc.?

I already noticed that were missing in Trixie because of journalctl but it looks like this has affected Devuan as well...

Is there a way to revert this situation and get the usual logs?

Thanks in advance! 🙏

Last edited by Danielsan (Yesterday 18:52:37)

tux_99

Member

Registered: 2025-06-17

Posts: 42  

Re: [SOLVED] Where are my logs?

Good point, I don't even see syslogd running (it does not appear to even get installed by default).

Can someone with knowledge please clarify?

Danielsan

Member

Registered: 2020-07-14

Posts: 196  

Re: [SOLVED] Where are my logs?

I found out that moving from Debian Trixie to Devuan Excalibur the package rsyslog is not installed — and I assume that it is probably missing also in a fresh install.
If you upgrade from Daedalus to Excalibur it will modify rsyslog.conf in order to hide: cron.log; kern.log; mail.log; and user.log.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,753  

Re: [SOLVED] Where are my logs?

I'm not seeing that behavior on fresh install of excalibur or upgrade from daedalus to excalibur. syslog and kern.log are there. /var/log/messages has been missing for years. Make sure rsyslog and cron are installed and running.

I did an upgrade from daedalus to excalibur yesterday and the date on /etc/rsyslog.conf is February of 2023. Nobody has edited it.

Danielsan

Member

Registered: 2020-07-14

Posts: 196  

Re: [SOLVED] Where are my logs?

On two computers I have upgraded from Daedalus to Excalibur and I noticed the logs were missing. Logs is not something that I usually messed with, but I don't exclude I could have touched something else that messed up with the logs... 🤷♂️

tux_99

Member

Registered: 2025-06-17

Posts: 42  

Re: [SOLVED] Where are my logs?

Actually only one of my two Excalibur installations is missing rsyslog, the one that I installed 3-4 months ago from a Devuan testing ISO (and that I checked earlier when I wrote my previous post), the one I installed recently from the Devuan release ISO (netinstall) has rsyslog installed and running (I just checked a minute ago) so I don't see an issue with the release ISOs.

Last edited by tux_99 (Yesterday 16:29:58)

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,353  

Re: [SOLVED] Where are my logs?

All my upgrades on my laptop and in my VMs, I am not missing any logs. Same with a new installation from the released netinstall in a VM. Maybe you used one of the testing editions, and there is something in the back of my mind that rsyslog was missed out on one or two of them.

Danielsan

Member

Registered: 2020-07-14

Posts: 196  

Re: [SOLVED] Where are my logs?

Thank you guys, it might be a me problem and of course another pebcak; but at least I learned how to revert to the usual log system; that has been one of the reason I moved my kid's laptop from Debian to Devuan; journalctl was pissing me off!