Logcheck

This guide shows you how to analyze system logs with logcheck.

Getting Started With logcheck

Background

app-admin/logcheck is an updated version of app-admin/logsentry, which is a tool to analyze the system logs. Additionally, logcheck comes with a built-in database of common, not-interesting log messages to filter out the noise. The general idea of the tool is that all messages are interesting, except the ones explicitly marked as noise. logcheck periodically sends you an e-mail with a summary of interesting messages.

Installing logcheck

Important
It is strongly recommended to remove logsentry if you have it installed on your system. Additionally, you should remove /etc/logcheck to avoid permission and file collision problem.

root #emerge -c logsentry

root #rm -rf /etc/logcheck

Now you can proceed with the installation of logcheck.

root #emerge --ask app-admin/logcheck

Basic configuration

app-admin/logcheck creates a separate user "logcheck" to avoid running as root. Actually, it will refuse to run as root. To allow it to analyze the logs, you need to make sure they are readable by logcheck. Here is an example for app-admin/syslog-ng :

FILE /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf/etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf snippet

options {
        owner(root);
  
        ## (Make log files group-readable by logcheck)
        group(logcheck);
        perm(0640);
};

Now reload the configuration and make sure the changes work as expected.

root #/etc/init.d/syslog-ng reload

root #ls -l /var/log/messages

-rw-r----- 1 root logcheck 1694438 Feb 12 12:18 /var/log/messages

You should now adjust some basic logcheck settings in /etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf .

FILE /etc/logcheck/logcheck.confBasic /etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf setup

# Controls the level of filtering:
# Can be Set to "workstation", "server" or "paranoid" for different
# levels of filtering. Defaults to server if not set.
## (The workstation level includes server, and server includes paranoid.
The paranoid level filters almost no messages)
REPORTLEVEL="server"
  
# Controls the address mail goes to:
# *NOTE* the script does not set a default value for this variable!
# Should be set to an offsite "emailaddress@some.domain.tld"
## (Make sure you can receive the logcheck e-mails. Testing is strongly
recommended)
SENDMAILTO="root"
  
# Controls if syslog-summary is run over each section.
# Alternatively, set to "1" to enable extra summary.
# HINT: syslog-summary needs to be installed.
## (If you get a lot of similar messages in the logs, you
may want to install app-admin/syslog-summary and enable
this setting)
SYSLOGSUMMARY=0

You also have to tell logcheck which log files to scan (/etc/logcheck/logcheck.logfiles).

FILE /etc/logcheck/logcheck.logfilesBasic /etc/logcheck/logcheck.logfiles setup

## (This is an example for syslog-ng)
/var/log/messages

Finally, enable the logcheck cron job.

root #nano -w /etc/cron.hourly/logcheck.cron

Note
For more information about cron read the Cron Guide.

Congratulations! Now you will be regularly getting important log messages by email. An example message looks like this:

CODE Example logcheck message

System Events
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Feb 10 17:13:53 localhost kernel: [30233.238342] conftest[25838]: segfault at 40 ip 40061403 sp bfc443c4 error 4
in libc-2.10.1.so[4003e000+142000]
Feb 11 12:31:21 localhost postfix/pickup[18704]: fatal: could not find any active network interfaces
Feb 11 12:31:22 localhost postfix/master[3776]: warning: process //usr/lib/postfix/pickup pid 18704 exit status 1
Feb 11 12:31:22 localhost postfix/master[3776]: warning: //usr/lib/postfix/pickup: bad command startup -- throttling

Troubleshooting

General tips

You can use the logcheck's -d switch to display more debugging information. Example:

root #su -s /bin/bash -c '/usr/sbin/logcheck -d' logcheck

D: [1281318818] Turning debug mode on
D: [1281318818] Sourcing - /etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf
D: [1281318818] Finished getopts c:dhH:l:L:m:opr:RsS:tTuvw
D: [1281318818] Trying to get lockfile: /var/lock/logcheck/logcheck.lock
D: [1281318818] Running lockfile-touch /var/lock/logcheck/logcheck.lock
D: [1281318818] cleanrules: /etc/logcheck/cracking.d/kernel
...
D: [1281318818] cleanrules: /etc/logcheck/violations.d/su
D: [1281318818] cleanrules: /etc/logcheck/violations.d/sudo
...
D: [1281318825] logoutput called with file: /var/log/messages
D: [1281318825] Running /usr/sbin/logtail2 on /var/log/messages
D: [1281318825] Sorting logs
D: [1281318825] Setting the Intro
D: [1281318825] Checking for security alerts
D: [1281318825] greplogoutput: kernel
...
D: [1281318825] greplogoutput: returning 1
D: [1281318825] Checking for security events
...
D: [1281318825] greplogoutput: su
D: [1281318825] greplogoutput: Entries in checked
D: [1281318825] cleanchecked - file: /tmp/logcheck.uIFLqU/violations-ignore/logcheck-su
D: [1281318825] report: cat'ing - Security Events for su
...
D: [1281318835] report: cat'ing - System Events
D: [1281318835] Setting the footer text
D: [1281318835] Sending report: 'localhost 2010-08-09 03:53 Security Events' to root
D: [1281318835] cleanup: Killing lockfile-touch - 17979
D: [1281318835] cleanup: Removing lockfile: /var/lock/logcheck/logcheck.lock
D: [1281318835] cleanup: Removing - /tmp/logcheck.uIFLqU

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This page is based on a document formerly found on our main website gentoo.org.
The following people contributed to the original document: phajdan.jr, nightmorph
They are listed here because wiki history does not allow for any external attribution. If you edit the wiki article, please do not add yourself here; your contributions are recorded on each article's associated history page.