Enable Rsyslog and Syslog cron events logging in
/var/log/cron.log on Debian Lenny
By default Debian doesn't log it's cron events in a separate log
file.
All the cron events got logged along with all the other syslog
events configured by default in either
syslog or
rsyslog.
So you end up with a /var/log/syslog which includes many versatile
messages. That's really unpleasent if you want to keep track of
your cron events separately.
I always change this behaviour while configuring new servers or
Desktop systems running Debian.
Therefore I decided to share here what I do to enable separate cron
logging. The logged cron events would go to
var/log/cron.log.
As a starter please make sure you have the file
/var/log/cron.log existing on your filesystem tree, if you
have it not then please create it:
debian:~# touch /var/log/cron.log
To configure your crond to log to /var/log/cron.log on a
system running
syslogd all you
have to do is edit
/etc/syslog.conf and either
include the line:
cron.* /var/log/cron.log
or simply uncomment the same line already laying commented in the
syslog.conf.
If you're using the enhanced version of
syslogd for Linux (Rsyslog) the code syntax
that is necessery to be included is absolutely identical.
Again you have to include:
cron.* /var/log/cron.log
in
/etc/rsyslog.conf or uncomment the line shown
above in /etc/rsyslog.conf.
Now last step to do is to reload syslogd or rsyslogd.
With syslogd running on your system execute:
debian:~# killall -HUP syslogd
With rsyslogd as a default system logger:
debian:~# killall -HUP rsyslogd
Now you should have your crond logging to the separate
/var/log/cron.log, wish you happy cron.log reading :)