[CentOS] Re: empty /var/log/messages

[Shawn Everett]

On Tuesday 26 June 2007, beast wrote:
> On 26/06/07 13:42 +0100, Seán O Sullivan wrote:
> >>> I have one centos 4.0 server which /var/log/messages was always
> >>> empty (0 bytes). I wonder what has been blocking the syslog to write
> >>> the log.
> >>
> >> Firstly, I'd suggest updating to 4.5.
>
> This is the production machine and has been runing for years, so
> upgrading OS is not not my first option :)
>
> >> Secondly, is /tmp mounted with noexec option?
>
> No afaik.
>
> root# mount | grep var
> /dev/hda4 on /var type ext3 (rw)
>
> >forgot to add, check /var/log/messages.* for current syslog messages
>
> root# ls -l messages*
> -rw-------  1 root root        0 Jun 25 11:11 messages
> -rw-------  1 root root 32480831 Jun  3 00:04 messages.1.gz
> -rw-------  1 root root 81601061 May 27 00:13 messages.2.gz
> -rw-------  1 root root   905460 May 20 00:01 messages.3.gz
> -rw-------  1 root root  1055604 May 13 00:01 messages.4.gz
>
> Note: previous messages.gz was having gigantic size because recent bug
> in spamassassin, it logs all spampd log thats why I disable it on the
> syslog.conf. But after few days I notice that messages were always
> empty, even I restart syslog and then mv and touch messages
>

Is it possible you broke your syslog.conf file?  You could always try 
reinstalling the file from the RPM.

Shawn